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THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 


THE  IMMANENCE 
OF  GOD 


BY 


BORDEN  P.  BOWNE 

Professor  of  Philosophy  in 
Boston  University 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 


\SN 


B  ^ 


iSFFITl 


COPYRIGHT  1905  BY  BORDEN  P.   BOWNE 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  October,  iqos 


THIRD  IMPRESSION 


PREFACE 

The  undivineness  of  the  natural  and  the 
unnaturalness  of  the  divine  is  the  great 
heresy  of  popular  thought  respecting  re- 
ligion. The  error  roots  in  a  deistic  and 
mechanical  philosophy,  and  in  turn  pro- 
duces a  large  part  of  the  misunderstand- 
ings that  haunt  religious  and  irreligious 
thought  alike.  To  assist  in  the  banish- 
ment of  this  error  by  showing  a  more 
excellent  way  is  the  aim  of  this  little 

book. 

Borden  P.  Bowne. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION     ....  I 

I.    GOD  AND  NATURE     ...  5 

II.    GOD  AND  HISTORY         .  .  .33 

III.  GOD  AND  THE  BIBLE  .  .  ^ 

IV.  GOD  AND  RELIGION       .  .  .1X6 


THE 

IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

INTRODUCTION 

The  progress  of  thought  is  slow,  but 
there  is  progress  nevertheless.  In  every 
field  of  life  men  have  had  painfully  to 
find  their  way.  In  religion  man  has  al- 
ways had  some  sense,  more  or  less  dim, 
of  an  alliance  with  the  unseen  and  the 
eternal,  but  it  has  taken  ages  to  organize 
and  clarify  it  and  bring  it  to  clear  ap- 
prehension and  rational  expression.  As 
men  begin  on  the  plane  of  the  senses, 
this  unseen  existence  has  been  mainly 
conceived  in  sense  terms,  and  hence 
has  always  been  exposed  to  destructive 
criticism  from  the  side  of  philosophy. 
The  crude  anthropomorphism  of  early 
thought  invited  and  compelled  the  criti- 
cism. Again,  this  vague  sense  of  the 
unseen  has  always  been  confronted  by 


2     THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

the  apparent  realities  and  finalities  of 
the  outer  world  ;  and  in  comparison  with 
them  it  has  often  seemed  unreal  and 
fictitious.  Matter  we  know  and  things 
we  know ;  but  God  and  spirit,  what  and 
where  are  they?  When  thus  skeptically- 
accosted  by  the  senses,  they  sometimes 
fade  away.  Hence  religious  faith  has 
always  had  a  double  difficulty  to  com- 
bat, arising  from  its  alliance  with  sense 
forms,  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  sense 
dogmatism,  on  the  other.  The  alliance 
was  perpetually  plunging  religion  into 
destructive  anthropomorphism ;  and  the 
sense  dogmatism  led  to  a  frequent  re- 
jection of  religion  as  baseless,  because 
spiritual  realities  lie  beyond  seeing  and 
hearing.  But  we  are  slowly  outgrowing 
this.  Religious  thought  is  gradually 
casting  off  its  coarse  anthropomor- 
phism ;  and  philosophic  criticism  is  fast 
discrediting  the  shallow  dogmatism  of 
sense  thinking,  with  its  implication  of 
mechanical  and  materialistic  naturalism. 


INTRODUCTION  3 

Thus  religious  thought  is  progressing ; 
and  the  result  to  which  all  lines  of  reflec- 
tion are  fast  converging  is  the  ancient 
word  of  inspiration,  that  in  God  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being.  This  is 
at  once  the  clear  indication  of  thought 
and  the  assured  conviction  of  faith.  In 
this  conclusion,  moreover,  both  religion 
and  philosophy  find  their  only  sure 
foundation. 

This  doctrine  we  call  the  divine  imma- 
nence ;  by  which  we  mean  that  God  is 
the  omnipresent  ground  of  all  finite  ex- 
istence and  activity.  The  world,  alike  of 
things  and  of  spirits,  is  nothing  existing 
and  acting  on  its  own  account,  while 
God  is  away  in  some  extra-sidereal  re- 
gion, but  it  continually  depends  upon 
and  is  ever  upheld  by  the  ever-living, 
ever-present,  ever-working  God. 

This  divine  immanence  has  important 
bearings  on  both  speculative  and  reli- 
gious problems,  and  contains  the  solution 
of  many  traditional  difficulties.  To  trace 


4     THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

this  doctrine  into  its  implications  is  the 
aim  of  the  discussion.  The  thought  will 
centre  on  four  leading  points,  —  God  and 
Nature,  God  and  History,  God  and  the 
Bible,  and  God  and  Religion.  On  each 
of  these  points  naturalistic  and  deistic 
dogmatism  has  long  wrought  confusion 
and  mischief. 


GOD   AND  NATURE 

There  is  a  scholastic  maxim  that  truth 
emerges  sooner  from  error  than  from  con- 
fusion. Allied  to  this  is  Goethe* s  remark, 
that  the  gods  themselves  can  do  nothing 
with  stupidity.  One  is  often  reminded  of 
both  of  these  truths  in  reading  popular 
discussions  of  the  supernatural,  whether 
from  the  religious  or  the  irreligious  stand- 
point. Their  most  prominent  feature  is 
confusion.  Out  of  such  a  state  of  things 
nothing  but  babble  and  Babel  can  result. 
Our  first  duty  in  this  matter  is  to  clear 
up  our  thought  so  as  to  know  what  we 
really  mean  and  desire. 

And  first  we  must  find  out  what  we 
mean  by  nature.  A  great  deal  of  bad 
metaphysics  is  commonly  concealed 
under  this  term,  and  it  is  the  unsuspected 
source  of  many  of  our  woes.  What,  then, 
is  nature? 


6     THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

Popular  thought  is  based  on  a  crude 
sense  realism.  There  is  a  system  of  ma- 
terial things,  it  holds,  about  us  in  space 
and  producing  a  great  variety  of  changes 
in  time.  The  immediate  agent  in  the  case 
is  matter,  which  by  its  inherent  forces 
and  laws  initiates  and  maintains  the  cos- 
mic processes  and  produces  their  mani- 
fold results.  This  system  of  things  and 
laws  we  call  nature ;  and  all  events  arising 
in  this  system  and  in  accordance  with  its 
laws  we  call  natural. 

This  view  seems  to  be  an  undeniable 
fact  of  experience.  Things  and  their 
forces  are  manifestly  there,  and  nothing 
else  is  in  sight.  Whatever  else  may  be 
doubtful,  there  can  be  no  question  about 
the  reality  and  activity  of  nature.  God 
and  spirit  are  hypotheses,  but  matter  is  a 
solid  and  substantial  fact. 

This  type  of  thought  has  always  had 
a  strong  tendency  to  atheism.  Nature  is 
made  into  a  self-running  system,  at  least 
for  the  present.    Within  the  system  all 


GOD  AND   NATURE  7 

things  seem  to  be  accounted  for  by  the 
system ;  and  as  the  beginning  disappears 
in  the  infinite  past,  and  horizons  vanish 
in  infinite  space,  the  thought  is  not  far 
away  that  perhaps  nature  has  always 
been  there  in  self-equaHty  and  self-suffi- 
ciency. Thus  "Nature  "  in  such  a  scheme 
is  always  on  the  point  of  setting  up  for 
itself.  In  any  case,  a  division  of  labor  is 
made  between  the  work  of  God  and  that 
of  nature.  Whatever  can  be  referred  to 
nature  is  supposed  to  be  sufficiently 
explained  without  further  reference.  If 
there  be  any  mind  at  all  in  connection 
with  nature,  it  is  needed  only  to  explain 
the  outstanding  facts  which  are  not  yet 
accounted  for  by  the  natural  order.  Thus 
God  is  at  best  only  a  provisional  hypo- 
thesis, and  becomes  less  and  less  neces- 
sary the  more  the  reign  of  natural  law 
is  extended.  Atheism  is  the  limit  of  this 
way  of  thinking.  As  Comte  once  said, 
science  will  finally  conduct  God  to  the 
frontier,  and  bow  him  out  with  thanks  for 


8     THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

his  provisional  services.  When  law  be- 
comes all-embracing,  God  will  be  a  need- 
less hypothesis.  How  general  this  way 
of  thinking  has  been  is  familiar  to  all 
who  are  acquainted  with  the  naturalistic 
literature  of  the  last  generation. 

Our  present  discussion  is  not  with  the 
atheist,  but  with  the  theist,  who  too  often 
holds  the  same  conception  of  nature  as 
the  atheist.  He  is  openly  or  tacitly  afraid 
of  nature,  and  naturalism  is  with  him  a 
term  of  dislike  or  reproach.  He  is  sus- 
picious of  the  reign  of  law,  and  is  quite 
depressed  when  some  outstanding  irreg- 
ularity is  at  last  reduced  to  order.  He 
looks  rather  anxiously  for  breaks  in  the 
natural  order,  insists  especially  on  the 
things  that  "science  cannot  explain," 
and  carefully  treasures  reports  of  mir- 
acles as  things  without  which  religion 
would  vanish,  but  with  which  we  may 
hope  to  put  to  flight  all  the  armies  of  the 
aliens.   And  it  must  be  admitted  that  his- 


GOD   AND   NATURE  9 

torically  there  has  been  much  to  excuse, 
if  not  to  justify,  this  attitude.  Natural- 
ism often  has  been  an  atheistic  doctrine. 
Nature  and  mind  have  been  set  up 
in  mutual  exclusion  ;  and  the  theist  with 
a  shallow  sense  philosophy  has  seen  no 
relief  but  in  decrying  naturalism  and 
natural  law  and  "science  falsely  so 
called,"  and  insisting  on  breaks  and  mir- 
acles and  things  "science  cannot  ex- 
plain.'^ Matter  might  possibly  explain  the 
solar  system  and  even  all  inorganic  pro- 
cesses and  products,  but  it  could  not 
explain  life,  it  was  said,  with  the  tacit 
admission,  which  sometimes  became  ex- 
plicit, that  spontaneous  generation,  if  it 
should  be  established,  would  be  the  final 
overthrow  of  theism.  Meanwhile,  neither 
theist  nor  atheist  suspected  that  perhaps 
matter  cannot  explain  anything  what- 
ever, and  as  an  ontological  fact  does  not 
even  exist. 

For  the  sake  of  the  "  natural  realist," 
to  whom  this  will  seem  manifest  error, 


10    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

if  not  raving,  a  word  must  be  interpo- 
lated here  respecting  the  phenomenality 
and  non-substantiality  of  the  apparent 
world.  Let  us  begin  by  admitting  the 
most  realistic  doctrine  of  things.  This 
table  on  which  I  am  writing  is  of 
course  real,  that  is,  it  is  no  dream  or 
illusion.  But  when  we  begin  to  reflect 
upon  the  nature  of  its  reality,  puzzles 
soon  emerge.  The  physicist  tell  us  of 
molecules  and  atoms  which  compose 
the  table,  and  when  we  ask  concerning 
them,  we  hear  of  vortex  rings  and  cen- 
tres of  force  and  various  other  mysteries. 
When  these  questions  are  thought  out, 
we  see  that  the  things  about  us  are  only 
phenomenal,  and  that  the  true  causality 
is  behind  them.  Thus  physics  itself 
speedily  leads  us  away  from  the  com- 
mon-sense notion  of  substantial  things 
about  us  with  various  inherent  forces 
which  do  the  work  of  the  world,  and 
brings  us  to  the  conception  of  one  su- 
preme causality  behind  phenomena,  on 


GOD  AND   NATURE  ii 

which  they  all  depend  and  from  which 
they  all  proceed.  From  this  point  of 
view,  the  theist  need  not  be  in  the  least 
disturbed  if  so-called  spontaneous  gen- 
eration were  established  as  a  fact ;  for 
it  would  only  show  that  the  supreme 
cause  has  more  than  one  way  of  work- 
ing. Theism  is  concerned  with  causality, 
not  with  method. 

But  apart  from  this  metaphysical  sug- 
gestion, the  theist's  horror  of  naturalism 
is  logically  inconsequent  in  any  case.  It 
rests  on  the  tacit  fancy  that  nature  is  a 
blind  mechanical  system  which  does  a 
great  many  unintended  things  on  its  own 
account.  These  represent  no  plan  or 
purpose  of  any  kind,  but  are  just  blind 
happenings  for  which  nature  alone  is 
responsible.  Whatever  comes  about  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  natural  order  expresses 
no  purpose;  it  is  simply  natural.  For 
purpose  we  must  have  "  interpositions," 
''  interferences,"  *'  special  providences," 
and  that  sort  of  thing.    Wherever  law 


12    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

can  be  traced  we  are  forbidden  to  think 
of  any  purposive  interpretation,  whether 
in  the  individual  life  or  in  the  larger  field 
of  history. 

How  shallow  this  is,  is  plain  upon 
inspection.  If  nature  be  dependent  on 
intelligence  for  its  origin,  it  is  equally 
dependent  on  intelligence  for  all  its  im- 
plications. Mechanism  of  itself  can  never 
make  any  new  departures,  or  reach  any- 
thing not  implied  in  it  from  the  begin- 
ning. If,  then,  we  suppose  that  God 
created  a  system  of  nature  which  was 
intended  to  unfold  according  to  inherent 
laws,  we  must  say  that  the  creative  act 
implied  and  carried  with  it  to  the  minut- 
est details  all  that  should  ever  arrive  in 
the  unfolding  of  the  system.  There  is 
no  way  by  which  things  or  events  could 
slip  in  which  were  not  provided  for  in 
the  primal  arrangement.  And  if  we  sup- 
pose the  Creator  to  have  known  what  he 
was  doing,  we  must  suppose  him  to  have 
intended  the  implications.   But  this  is  all 


GOD   AND   NATURE  13 

that  theism  cares  to  assert.  If  an  event 
represents  a  divine  purpose,  or  is  part  of 
a  divine  plan,  it  is  as  truly  purposeful 
when  realized  through  natural  processes 
as  it  would  be  if  produced  by  fiat.  But 
we  miss  the  reality  of  the  purpose  from 
the  fancy  that  the  natural  system  can  do 
a  lot  of  things  to  which  it  was  not  deter- 
mined by  the  creative  act,  and  which 
therefore  are  mere  mechanical  occur- 
rences without  any  further  significance. 
And  when  we  allow  the  purpose,  we 
practically  cancel  it  by  overlooking  the 
relativity  of  our  temporal  judgments 
and  placing  the  purpose  so  far  away  in 
time  that  we  think  it  must  have  faded 
out  of  the  divine  thought  and  interest 
altogether.  The  things  we  planned  years 
ago  we  have  forgotten  or  they  have  lost 
all  value  for  us,  and  we  suppose  it  must 
be  so  with  God.  Of  a  faithful  purpose 
moving  across  the  ages  and  forever  keep- 
ing tryst  with  foreseen  need,  we  have  no 
conception. 


14    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

But  this  is  superficial  to  the  last  de- 
gree. Long  and  short  are  relative  terms 
at  best,  and  have  no  significance  for  the 
Eternal.  Metaphysics,  too,  adds  its  sug- 
gestion, which  nullifies  all  these  tra- 
ditional intimidations  drawn  from  the 
measureless  age  of  the  world,  that  time 
itself  is  only  a  relation  in  self-conscious- 
ness and  has  no  such  meaning  for  the 
Infinite  as  it  has  for  us.  In  that  case,  time 
is  merely  the  shadow  of  our  finitude  and 
not  a  supreme  law  of  all  existence.  We 
need  not,  then,  give  up  the  belief  in  pur- 
pose because  of  law,  or  because  of  the  age 
of  things.  To  be  sure,  we  are  often  un- 
able to  discern  any  special  significance 
in  events  ;  but  that  only  means  that  the 
underlying  purpose  is  not  always  evi- 
dent. But  that  the  event  is  natural,  in 
the  sense  of  occurring  in  an  order  of  law, 
is  absolutely  unrelated  to  the  question 
of  purpose;  and  this  is  the  only  ques- 
tion of  importance  for  the  theist. 

The  theist,  then,  is  guilty  of  bad  logic 


GOD   AND   NATURE  15 

when  he  makes  the  order  of  law  a  reason 
for  denying  purpose.  The  way  in  which 
events  occur  in  an  order  of  law  is  one 
thing;  the  meaning  of  such  events  in 
a  scheme  of  purpose  is  forever  another. 
Hence  we  might  maintain  the  natural- 
ness of  all  events,  in  the  sense  defined, 
and  at  the  same  time  might  include  all 
events  in  a  purposive  interpretation. 
Man's  control  of  nature  is  realized 
through  mechanical  processes  in  accord- 
ance with  natural  law,  but  it  is  informed 
with  purpose,  nevertheless.  If  some  lu- 
nar scientist,  well  versed  in  physics  and 
chemistry  but  ignorant  of  human  per- 
sonality, should  visit  our  planet,  he  could 
rule  out  human  purpose  in  nature  with 
the  same  logic  with  which  we  rule  out 
divine  purpose.  The  same  fact  of  law 
applies  to  both,  and  is  equally  compat- 
ible or  incompatible  with  both.  This  false 
antithesis  of  law  and  purpose  is  one  of  the 
great  superficialities  of  popular  thought, 
and  rests  upon  an  untenable  philosophy. 


i6    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

But  both  theists  and  atheists  are  alike 
guilty  of  bad  metaphysics  when  they 
erect  the  system  of  nature  into  an  onto- 
logical  reality  in  any  case.  The  progress 
of  philosophical  criticism  has  shown  na- 
ture in  this  sense  to  be  only  an  idol  of 
the  dogmatic  den.  There  is  no  substan- 
tial or  ontological  nature,  but  only  natu- 
ral events ;  and  a  natural  event  is  one 
which  occurs  in  an  order  of  law,  or  one 
which  we  can  connect  with  other  events 
according  to  rule.  But  this  order  has  no 
causality  in  it.  In  the  causal  sense  it  ex- 
plains nothing,  being  really  only  a  rule 
according  to  which  some  power  beyond 
it  proceeds.  Respecting  the  natural  order 
two  quite  distinct  questions  may  be 
asked.  These  concern,  first,  the  uniform- 
ities of  coexistence  and  sequence  which 
constitute  the  order ;  and,  second,  the 
underlying  causality  and  purpose  of  the 
order.  Things  exist  and  events  happen 
in  certain  ways.  To  discover,  describe, 
and  register  these  ways  of  being  and 


GOD   AND   NATURE  17 

happening  is  the  function  of  science. 
But  when  this  is  done,  we  further  need  to 
form  some  conception  of  the  causaUty 
at  work,  and  of  the  purpose  which  may 
underlie  the  whole.  This  is  the  field  of 
philosophy.  These  two  questions,  as  said, 
are  quite  distinct,  and  the  answer  to  both 
is  necessary  to  the  full  satisfaction  of 
the  mind.  As  a  result  of  this  distinction, 
which  is  fast  making  its  way  in  the  higher 
speculative  circles,  the  antithesis  of  nat- 
ural and  supernatural  is  taking  on  an- 
other form,  and  one  from  which  many 
scandals  that  infest  the  traditional  view 
disappear. 

In  the  new  conception  the  supernatural 
is  nothing  foreign  to  nature  and  making 
occasional  raids  into  nature  in  order  to  re- 
veal itself,  but,  so  far  as  nature  as  a  whole 
is  concerned,  the  supernatural  is  the  ever- 
present  ground  and  administrator  of  na- 
ture ;  and  nature  is  simply  the  form 
under  which  the  Supreme  Reason  and 
Will  manifest  themselves.    This  is  the 


i8    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

doctrine  of  the  divine  immanence  to  which 
philosophy  is  coming  in  its  search  after 
the  cosmic  causality.  We  come  down, 
not  to  a  world  of  lumps,  nor  to  any  im- 
personal principle,  but  to  a  Living  Will 
which  worketh  hitherto,  and  which  work- 
eth  forevermore.  And  nature  being  but 
the  fixed  form  of  the  divine  causality,  we 
must  say  that  events  in  general  are  at 
once  natural  in  the  mode  of  their  occur- 
rence, in  that  they  come  about  according 
to  rule,  and  supernatural  in  their  causa- 
tion, in  that  they  all  alike  abut  on  that 
Living  Will  by  which  all  things  stand 
and  from  which  they  forever  proceed. 
The  commonest  event,  say  the  fall  of  a 
.  leaf,  is  as  supernatural  in  its  causation  as 
^o  •  any  miracle  would  be  ;  for  in  both  alike 
God  would  be  equally  implicated. 

This  division  of  labor  between  science 
and  philosophy  has  brought  about  a  bet- 
ter understanding  than  formerly  existed. 
Both  parties  are  seen  to  have  important 


GOD   AND   NATURE  19 

interests  to  guard,  and  each  party  has 
inahenable  rights  in  its  own  field.  They 
can  collide  only  through  confusion.  Sci- 
ence as  such  explains  nothing,  for  it  only 
classifies  and  coordinates  facts  accord- 
ing to  rule ;  and  philosophy  as  such  is 
empty  until  experience  furnishes  the 
facts.  When,  then,  we  are  told  that  sci- 
ence must  never  have  recourse  to  super- 
natural explanations,  on  the  one  hand,  or 
that  "  science  cannot  explain  "  this,  that, 
or  the  other  thing,  on  the  other,  we  know 
that  confusion  lieth  at  the  door,  and  that 
a  distinction  is  in  order.  In  the  scientific 
sense,  explanation  consists  in  exhibiting 
the  fact  as  a  case  or  implication  of  an 
empirically  discovered  rule ;  and  in  this 
sense  we  must  never  have  recourse  to 
supernatural  explanations.  If  the  fact 
cannot  be  reduced  to  rule  of  any  sort, 
science  can  only  let  it  alone  and  wait  for 
light.  But  in  the  causal  sense  science 
explains  nothing.  Here  the  alternative  is 
supernatural  explanation  or  none.   Meta- 


20    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

physics  shows  that  mechanical  explana- 
tion must  lose  itself  in  barren  tautologies 
and  the  infinite  regress,  and  must  even 
disperse  existence  itself  into  nothingness 
through  the  infinite  divisibility  of  space 
and  time.  But  these  two  types  of  expla- 
nation, the  scientific  and  the  causal,  in 
no  way  conflict.  If  we  admit  that  things 
hang  together  in  certain  ways,  the  cau- 
sality and  purpose  are  not  revealed 
thereby  ;  and  if  we  affirm  a  supernatural 
causality,  the  form  and  contents  of  its 
working  remain  an  open  question. 

The  failure  to  make  this  distinction  is 
well  illustrated  by  a  recent  discussion  in 
the  London  "  Times."  Lord  Kelvin,  who 
is  well  known  as  one  of  the  greatest 
leaders  of  physical  science,  said,  in  a  let- 
ter to  the  "  Times : "  "  Scientific  thought 
is  compelled  to  accept  the  idea  of  Crea- 
tive Power.  Forty  years  ago,  I  asked 
Liebig,  walking  somewhere  in  the  coun- 
try, if  he  believed  that  the  grass  and  the 
flowers  which  he  saw  around  us  gre^ 


GOD   AND   NATURE  21 

by  mere  chemical  forces.  He  answered, 
*  No,  no  more  than  I  could  believe  that 
the  books  of  botany  describing  them 
could  grow  by  mere  chemical  forces/ 
Every  action  of  human  free  will  is  a 
miracle  to  physical  and  chemical  and 
mathematical  science." 

This  letter  called  out  considerable  cor- 
respondence and  comment.  Lord  Kel- 
vin himself  seemed  to  think  that  "  mere 
chemical  forces"  would  explain  much, 
but  were  not  equal  to  the  explanation  of 
life.  This  laid  him  open  to  obvious  reply. 
If  "  mere "  natural  forces  could  do  so 
much,  who  can  tell  where  the  "  mere- 
ness  "  becomes  inadequate  ?  But  neither 
Lord  Kelvin  nor  his  critics,  some  of 
whom  were  inclined  to  view  his  utter- 
ance as  an  outbreak  of  Scotch  orthodoxy, 
had  any  clear  idea  of  what  they  meant 
by  explanation,  and  hence  came  to  no 
conclusion.  If  by  explanation  we  mean 
a  view  which  will  enable  the  mind  to  in- 
terpret the  facts  in  all  their  aspects,  Lord 


22    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

Kelvin  was  right ;  but  if  by  explanation 
we  mean  simply  a  classification  of  the 
facts  under  empirical  rules,  his  critics 
were  right.  For  such  explanation  the 
idea  of  God  is  as  little  needed  in  science 
as  it  is  in  shoemaking,  and  is  equally 
irrelevant  in  both  ;  but  at  the  same  time, 
such  explanation  remains  on  the  surface 
and  does  not  touch  the  deeper  questions 
of  thought  at  all. 

The  same  is  true  of  explanations  by 
evolution,  natural  selection,  etc.  They 
simply  describe  an  order  for  which  they 
do  not  account,  and  hence,  so  far  as  any 
real  insight  is  concerned,  we  get  no  help 
from  them.  For  real  insight  we  need  to 
know  what  the  power  is  which  is  at 
work,  why  it  works  as  it  does,  why  the 
arrivals  and  survivals  are  such  that  their 
net  result  is  to  produce  an  orderly  and 
progressive  system ;  and  to  these  in- 
quiries mechanical  naturalism  has  no 
answer.  The  distinction  between  evo- 
lution as  a  description  of  method  and 


GOD   AND   NATURE  23 

evolution  as  a  doctrine  of  causality  has 
reduced  this  doctrine  to  a  very  sub- 
ordinate significance,  and  has  deprived 
it  entirely  of  all  those  fearsome  implica- 
tions which  it  had  for  superficial  thought. 
As  a  mode  of  procedure,  it  is  as  good  as 
any  other ;  as  a  doctrine  of  mechanical 
causality  and  progress,  it  is  altogether 
impossible. 

We  cannot,  then,  too  carefully  dis- 
tinguish between  the  description  and  for- 
mulation which  science  gives  and  the 
causal  and  purposive  interpretation  for 
which  philosophy  seeks.  The  notion  that 
science  is  gradually  enabling  us  to  dis- 
pense with  God  is  superficial  almost  to 
illiterac)'- ;  and  the  opposite  notion  that 
would  confuse  scientific  descriptions, 
classifications,  and  formulations  by  irrel- 
evant theistic  suggestions  is  equally  so. 
Imagine  a  theologian  who  should  inter- 
rupt a  geographer  in  his  surveys  and 
measurements  to  ask  what  geography 
says  about  God  ;  and  then  imagine  a 


24    THE  IMMANENCE  OF   GOD 

geographer  who,  because  God  is  not 
needed  in  surveying  and  map-making, 
should  conclude  that  God  is  a  "  needless 
hypothesis."  Each  would  be  worthy  of 
the  other.  According  to  Mrs.  Carlyle, 
"  the  mixing  of  things  is  the  great  bad  ; " 
and  there  certainly  never  was  a  greater 
"  bad,"  in  its  way,  than  the  "  mixing " 
of  the  question  of  scientific  description 
and  formulation  with  that  of  philosophic 
interpretation,  the  sure  result  being  a 
"conflict  of  science  and  religion,"  or 
some  other  unprofitable  aberration. 

The  instructed  theist,  then,  sets  aside 
the  self-running  nature  and  the  absentee 
God.  For  him  there  is  no  nature  which 
does  at  least  the  bulk  of  the  world's 
work,  while  God  is  reserved  for  inter- 
positions. For  him  God  is  the  ever-pre- 
sent agent  in  the  on-going  of  the  world, 
and  nature  is  but  the  form  and  product 
of  his  ceaseless  activity.  The  theist,  there- 
fore, is  not  afraid  of  naturalism ;  for  the 


GOD   AND   NATURE  25 

naturalism  of  atheistic  thought  he  knows 
to  be  an  illusion,  while  naturalism  in 
theistic  thought  is  merely  the  search  for 
God's  familiar  and  orderly  methods  in 
all  his  works.  The  theist  knows  that  he 
is  in  God's  world,  and  that  the  ultimate 
reason  why  anything  is,  or  changes,  or 
comes  to  pass,  must  be  sought  not  in 
any  mechanical  necessity,  nor  in  any 
natural  antecedents,  nor  in  any  imper- 
sonal agency  of  any  kind,  but  in  the 
will  and  purpose  of  that  God  in  whom 
all  things  live  and  move  and  have  their 
being.  Every  system  of  whatever  sort 
must  come  down  at  last  to  some  fact,  or 
system  of  facts,  of  which  no  more  can  be 
said  than  that  it  is.  This  fact,  to  which  all 
else  is  referred,  and  from  which  all  else 
takes  its  rise,  is,  for  theism,  the  will  and 
purpose  of  the  Eternal. 

At  the  same  time  the  instructed  theist 
recognizes  that  the  divine  causality  pro- 
ceeds in  orderly  ways,  so  that  events  do 
not  happen  at  random  but  according  to 


26    THE   IMMANENCE  OF   GOD 

rule.  To  discover  the  modes  of  being 
and  happening  is  the  function  of  induc- 
tive science  ;  and  practical  wisdom  de- 
pends on  this  knowledge.  When  we 
know  how  things  hang  together  in  the 
order  of  law,  we  can  adjust  ourselves 
thereto,  and  to  a  very  considerable  ex- 
tent can  subordinate  nature  to  our  pur- 
poses. In  the  fact  and  knowledge  of 
this  system  of  law  we  have  the  condi- 
tion of  science  and  practical  living.  In 
the  insight  that  this  system  is  no  self- 
sufficient  fact,  but  simply  the  form  of  a 
divine  causality,  we  have  the  supreme 
condition  of  religion. 

Thus  we  have  to  correct  the  false  con- 
ception of  nature  and  the  natural  which 
underlies  popular  thought.  Nature  is 
supposed,  for  the  present  at  least,  to  run 
itself,  and  is  set  up  as  a  rival  of  God  ; 
so  that  God  is  needed  only  to  explain 
the  outstanding  facts  which  as  yet  have 
found  no  natural  explanation.  With  this 
conception  naturalism  could  not  fail  to 


GOD  AND   NATURE  2y 

be  looked  upon  as  hostile  to  religion, 
and  it  became  a  synonym  for  infidelity. 
And  there  was  a  great  deal  of  natural- 
ism of  this  sort,  which  promised  to  dis- 
pense with  God  altogether  after  a  while. 
This  was  **bald  naturalism,"  and  it  was 
met  by  an  equally  "  bald  "  supernatural- 
ism,  a  thing  of  portents,  prodigies,  and 
interpositions,  spooking  about  among 
the  laws  of  nature,  breaking  one  now 
and  then,  but  having  no  vital  connection 
with  the  orderly  movement  of  the  world. 
Both  views  were  bald,  and  they  were 
especially  bald  inside.  A  better  meta- 
physics, however,  enables  us  to  set  aside 
with  all  conviction  both  sorts  of  baldness. 
The  cosmic  order  is  no  rival  of  God,  but 
is  simply  the  continuous  manifestation 
and  product  of  the  divine  activity.  There 
is  no  longer  any  reason  for  being  afraid 
of  naturalism,  for  naturalism  is  now 
merely  a  tracing  of  the  order  in  which 
the  divine  causality  proceeds.  It  is  de- 
scription, not  explanation.   It  classifies 


28    THE  IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

events  under  familiar  heads,  but  for  the 
causal  explanation  and  purpose  of  all 
events  we  must  fall  back  on  God;  and 
that  not  on  a  God  that  was,  but  on  a  God 
that  is,  and  whose  activity  did  not  cease 
with  the  end  of  creation's  week,  but  con- 
tinues forevermore. 

We  are,  then,  in  God's  world,  and  all 
things  continuously  depend  on  him.  We 
have  not  to  attempt  an  impossible  divi- 
sion between  God's  work  and  that  of 
nature,  for  there  is  no  such  division ;  we 
have  rather  to  study  the  method  and 
contents  of  God's  work  which  we  call 
nature,  and  in  which  God  is  forever  im- 
manent. Thus  the  naturalistic  and  deistic 
banishment  of  God  from  the  real  world 
is  recalled,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  divine 
immanence  is  put  in  its  place ;  yet  not 
an  immanence  of  disorder  and  arbitra- 
riness, but  an  immanence  of  goodness 
and  wisdom  and  law. 

This  general  conception  of  the  divine 


GOD   AND   NATURE  29 

immanence  has  only  imperfectly  passed 
from  philosophical  thought  into  theologi- 
cal and  religious  thinking.  It  has,  how- 
ever, important  religious  bearings  which 
need  to  be  pointed  out ;  for  too  often  we 
mistake  our  sense  dogmatism  for  science, 
and  our  misunderstandings  for  religion. 
In  a  recent  number  of  the  "Sunday- 
School  Times  "  a  story  is  told  of  an  East- 
em  king  which  illustrates  at  once  our 
delusion  respecting  natural  processes, 
and  also  God's  work  and  presence  in 
them.  The  king  was  seated  in  a  garden, 
and  one  of  his  counselors  was  speaking 
of  the  wonderful  works  of  God.  "  Show 
me  a  sign,"  said  the  king,  "and  I  will 
believe."  "  Here  are  four  acorns,"  said 
the  counselor ;  "  will  your  majesty  plant 
them  in  the  ground,  and  then  stoop 
down  for  a  moment  and  look  into  this 
clear  pool  of  water?"  The  king  did  so. 
"  Now,"  said  the  other,  *'  look  up."  The 
king  looked  up  and  saw  four  oak-trees 
where  he  had  planted  the  acorns.  "  Won- 


30    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

derful ! "  he  exclaimed  ;  "  this  is  indeed 
the  work  of  God."  "  How  long  were 
you  looking  into  the  water  ?  "  asked  the 
counselor.  "  Only  a  second,"  said  the 
king.  "Eighty  years  have  passed  as  a 
second,"  said  the  other.  The  king  looked 
at  his  garments ;  they  were  threadbare. 
He  looked  at  his  reflection  in  the  water ; 
he  had  become  an  old  man.  **  There  is 
no  miracle  here,  then,"  he  said  angrily. 
"  Yes,"  said  the  other ;  *'  it  is  God's  work, 
whether  he  do  it  in  one  second  or  in 
eighty  years." 

Comte  held  that  human  thought  be- 
gins in  the  theological  stage,  where  all 
phenomena  are  referred  to  arbitrary 
wills  in  them  or  beyond  them.  It  then 
passes  to  the  metaphysical  stage,  where 
phenomena  are  explained  by  abstract 
notions  of  cause,  etc.  These  abstrac- 
tions are  only  the  ghosts  of  the  theolo- 
gical personalities  of  the  earlier  stage; 
and  when  they  are  seen  as  such,  thought 
passes  into  the  third  and  last  stage  of 


GOD   AND   NATURE  31 

development,  the  positive  stage.  Here 
we  content  ourselves  with  simply  study- 
ing the  orders  of  coexistence  and  se- 
quence among  things  and  events,  and 
abandon  all  metaphysical  inquiry  as  fruit- 
less and  hopeless.  In  this  Comte  was 
partly  right  and  partly  wrong.  His  limi- 
tation of  science  to  the  study  of  the  uni- 
formities of  coexistence  and  sequence 
among  phenomena,  and  the  exclusion 
therefrom  of  all  causal  inquiry,  was  a 
stroke  of  genius.  His  rejection  of  ab- 
stract metaphysics  as  only  a  spectral 
shadow  of  the  earlier  personal  explana- 
tions was  equally  profound  and  important 
and  just.  Later  philosophic  criticism  has 
shown  that  the  categories  of  abstract 
metaphysics  are  only  the  abstract  forms 
of  the  self-conscious  life,  and  that  apart 
from  that  life  they  are  empty  or  self-con- 
tradictory. But  Comte  was  mistaken  in 
ruling  out  all  metaphysics.  The  human 
mind  was  never  more  prolific  of  meta- 
physical constructions  than  it  has  been 


32    THE  IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

since  Comte  put  metaphysics  under  the 
ban.  It  only  remains  that  we  give  our 
metaphysics  a  tenable  form,  that  of  per- 
sonality. Personalism  is  the  only  meta- 
physics that  does  not  dissolve  away  into 
self-canceling  abstractions.  Thus  in  a 
way  thought  returns  to  the  theological 
stage  again,  but  with  a  difference.  We 
return,  not  to  a  rabble  of  arbitrary  and 
capricious  wills  behind  nature,  but  to  a 
Supreme  Rational  Will,  which  forever 
founds  and  administers  the  order  of  the 
world. 

"  Back  of  the  loaf  is  the  snowy  flour. 
Back  of  the  flour  the  mill ; 
Back  of  the  mill  is  the  wheat  and  the  shower 
And  the  sun  and  the  Father's  will." 

The  Father's  will  is  not  back  of  these 
things  at  some  awful  distance  of  time 
and  space,  but  is  their  present  living 
source;  and  they  in  turn  are  but  the 
form  in  which  that  will  expresses  and 
realizes  itself.  For  in  him  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being. 


II 

GOD  AND   HISTORY 

The  deistic  conception  of  God  as  an 
absentee,  while  nature  runs  on  of  itself, 
leads  to  a  similar  conception  of  his  rela- 
tion to  history.  History  is  supposed  for 
the  most  part,  if  not  entirely,  to  go  on 
according  to  general  laws  without  any 
supernatural  interference,  and  probably 
without  any  supernatural  guidance.  Thus 
naturalism,  which  begins  in  the  physical 
realm,  is  extended  into  the  historical 
field,  and  considerable  misunderstanding 
results. 

The  good  feature  in  naturalism,  in 
whatever  realm,  is  its  emphasis  of  law. 
We  can  all  now  see  how  much  we  owe 
to  it.  We  live  in  peace  and  sanity  where 
our  mediaeval  ancestors  lived  in  danger- 
ous and  destructive  obsessions  from  lack 
of  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  nature  and 


34    THE  IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

life.  Life  swarmed  with  omens,  portents, 
judgments,  devils ;  and  it  was  as  much 
as  a  man's  life  was  worth  to  have  a  small 
measure  of  good  sense.  As  for  science, 
it  was  infidel,  an  unfruitful  work  of  dark- 
ness, a  device  of  Satan  for  the  destruc- 
tion of  souls,  etc.  Some  illustrations  will 
prove  instructive. 

The  fact  of  law  in  the  heavens  had 
to  be  admitted  at  a  pretty  early  date, 
at  least  for  the  main  phenomena;  and 
religious  thought,  after  divers  maledic- 
tions, had  to  adjust  itself  as  well  as  it 
could.  Of  course  the  Copernican  astro- 
nomy had  to  fight  its  way  against  texts 
and  ecclesiastical  denunciations.  "  The 
world  also  is  stablished  that  it  cannot 
be  moved,"  and  "  the  sun  knoweth  his 
going  down."  Moreover,  Joshua  com- 
manded the  sun  to  stand  still,  and  it 
must  have  been  moving  before.  Texts 
like  these  clearly  established  the  sun's 
motion  and  the  earth's  rest.  Neverthe- 
less, theology  had  to  surrender  at  last 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  35 

All  the  more  was  it  inclined  to  hold 
on  to  the  "signs  and  wonders"  in  the 
heavens,  such  as  meteors,  eclipses,  and 
especially  comets.  An  enormous  mass 
of  superstition  grew  up  about  these 
things  in  the  earliest  times,  and  when 
this  was  reenforced  by  various  texts,  in- 
terpreted after  the  fashion  of  the  time, 
a  grotesque  cometary  orthodoxy  was 
produced  from  which  it  was  heresy  to 
depart.  In  the  "  sound  and  safe  "  theo- 
logical learning  of  the  time  they  were 
tokens  of  divine  wrath  against  human 
sin,  or  they  presaged  distress  which 
should  come  upon  the  earth,  such  as 
famine,  or  pestilence,  or  the  death  of 
kings.  Such  a  view  had  obvious  advan- 
tages. It  gave  the  clergy  a  hold  on  the 
superstitious  imaginations  of  their  flock, 
and  besides  it  seemed  to  give  a  visible 
manifestation  of  the  divine  existence. 
With  all  these  advantages,  the  scientific 
view  was  denounced  as  godless  and 
blasphemous  as  a  matter  of  course,  and 


36    THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

as  rooting  in  a  wicked  purpose  to  de- 
throne God.  But  plainly  the  main  source 
of  trouble  was  the  false  supernatural. 
Men  forgot  the  19th  Psalm,  and  looked 
for  God  in  signs  and  wonders,  but  missed 
him  in  the  orderly  heavens.  Hence,  when 
the  signs  and  wonders  were  reduced  to 
law,  they  supposed  that  atheism  was  at 
the  door. 

The  same  sorry  history  was  repeated 
with  meteorology.  The  theologian  formed 
a  theory  of  storms,  and  especially  of  light- 
ning, for  which  he  had  the  usual  stock 
of  texts.  Powers  infernal  and  supernal 
mingled  in  this  theory.  The  **  prince 
of  the  power  of  the  air,"  in  particular, 
played  a  leading  r61e,  although  witches 
were  cast  for  prominent  parts.  Witches 
were  easily  managed,  as  fagots  were 
cheap  ;  but  Satan  was  fireproof  and  had 
to  be  cast  out  by  exorcisms,  the  burning 
of  asafoetida,  and  especially  by  the  ring- 
ing of  consecrated  bells.  Of  course  me- 
teorology was  **a  godless  science,"  which 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  37 

was  resisted  as  long  as  possible.  And 
the  reason  was  that  the  false  supernatural 
had  placed  religion  in  hostility  to  the 
notion  of  law. 

The  development  of  medical  science 
reveals  the  same  aberration.  The  canon 
law  declared  the  precepts  of  medicine  con- 
trary to  divine  knowledge.  The  theory 
that  diseases  are  due  to  natural  causes 
which  may  be  discovered,  and  removed 
or  guarded  against,  was  deprecated  as 
irreligious.  There  was  something  of  un- 
belief in  seeking  cure  by  natural  means. 
For  diseases,  especially  the  more  strik- 
ing epidemics,  were  either  "  visitations  " 
from  above,  or  due  to  the  devil ;  and  in 
either  case,  "  vain  was  the  help  of  man.'* 
To  seek  for  help  from  the  physicians, 
especially  after  the  doleful  experience 
of  Hezekiah,  was  "  flying  in  the  face  of 
Providence,"  "endeavoring  to  baffle  a 
divine  judgment,"  "  unfaithfulness  to  the 
revealed  law  of  God."  Every  advance  of 
medical  science  was  met  with  similar 


38    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

opposition.  Inoculation  and  vaccination 
were  quite  infernal ;  quinine  was  "  an 
invention  of  the  devil ;  "  and  sanitation 
was  a  work  of  unbelief.  The  use  of  anaes- 
thetics betrayed  an  especial  depth  of  re- 
bellion against  God ;  and  one  woman  in 
Scotland  was  burned  alive  for  resorting 
to  them.  The  use  of  chloroform  was 
vehemently  denounced  as  contrary  to 
the  Word  of  God  ;  and  Simpson,  the  dis- 
coverer of  the  anaesthetic,  was  forced  to 
answer  fools  according  to  their  folly  by 
pointing  out  that  in  the  first  surgical 
operation  on  record,  that  on  Adam  for 
the  extraction  of  Eve,  "  God  caused  a 
deep  sleep  to  fall  upon  Adam,"  thus  set- 
ting an  example  for  modern  surgical 
practice !  Even  so  late  as  1853,  accord- 
ing to  Buckle,  the  Presbytery  of  Ed- 
inburgh thought  a  day  of  fasting  and 
prayer,  without  any  sanitary  measures, 
would  be  an  efficient  safeguard  against 
the  cholera ;  and  they  were  sorely  scan- 
dalized when  Lord  Palmerston  informed 


GOD  AND  HISTORY  39 

them  that  it  was  better  to  cleanse  than 
to  fast,  and  that  wise  sanitary  measures 
would  be  more  effective  than  humiliation. 
He  advised  them  to  destroy  the  causes 
of  disease  by  removing  and  destroying 
filth,  and  by  improving  the  houses  of  the 
poor.  Otherwise,  he  said,  the  pestilence 
would  be  sure  to  come,  "  in  spite  of  all 
the  prayers  and  fastings  of  a  united,  but 
inactive  nation." 

Palmerston's  letter  made  a  great  stir. 
A  couple  of  hundred  years  earlier  it 
might  have  cost  him  his  life.  Now  his 
statements  are  self-evident,  and  serve 
only  to  show  how  far  we  have  traveled 
in  fifty  years. 

Sporadic  cases  of  this  fear  of  the  nat- 
ural were  often  very  funny.  In  Sweden 
they  sometimes  have  red  snow  and  rain, 
and  this  used  to  pass  for  a  miracle.  Lin- 
naeus looked  into  a  case  of  this  kind,  and 
found  it  due  to  minute  organisms  which 
produced  the  red  color.  When  Bishop 
Svedberg  heard  of  this  "bald  natural- 


40    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

ism/^  he  denounced  it  as  an  "  abyss  of 
Satan,"  the  aim  of  which  was  to  do  away 
with  the  miracle.  "When  God  allows 
such  a  miracle  to  take  place,"  he  said, 
"Satan  endeavors,  and  so  do  his  un- 
godly, self-reliant,  worldly  tools,  to  make 
it  signify  nothing." 

Coleridge  relates  how  some  students 
at  Jena,  in  the  attempt  to  raise  a  spirit 
for  the  discovery  of  a  supposed  hidden 
treasure,  were  poisoned  by  the  fumes  of 
charcoal,  which  they  were  burning  in  their 
incantations.  It  was  taken  for  granted 
that  the  devil  had  destroyed  them,  and 
when  Hoffmann,  a  renowned  physician  of 
the  time,  acquitted  the  devil  of  all  direct 
concern  in  the  business,  and  charged 
the  result  to  the  spirit  of  avarice  and  the 
fumes  of  burning  charcoal,  the  theological 
faculty  took  the  alarm  and  denounced 
such  teaching  as  hostile  to  religion  and 
tending  to  atheism.  The  Swedish  bishop 
and  the  German  professors  were  in  the 
toils  of  the  false  supernatural. 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  41 

Facts  of  this  kind,  and  their  name  is 
legion,  show  what  we  owe  to  naturalism. 
It  is  plain  that  religion  is  a  very  danger- 
ous drug  unless  wisely  administered. 
When  the  supernatural  paralyzes  intel- 
ligence and  makes  men  afraid  to  move 
because  of  some  threatening  superstition, 
as  is  still  the  case  with  vast  masses  of 
men  in  non-Christian  communities,  even 
a  period  of  atheism  may  be  necessary 
for  the  cure  of  the  patient.  Not  without 
reason  did  Lucretius  declaim  against  re- 
ligion as  an  enemy  of  the  race,  for  such 
it  often  has  been  and  is.  The  present 
attitude  of  the  clergy  in  large  sections 
of  Christendom  toward  education  is  a 
significant  illustration. 

But  when  we  look  over  this  sorry  his- 
tory, the  root  of  the  trouble  is  evidently  a 
false  naturalism  and  a  false  supernatural- 
ism.  Religious thoughthas  always  rightly 
held  to  the  supernatural ;  but,  from  lack 
of  knowledge,  it  held  to  it  ignorantly 
and  superstitiously,  and  hence,  often,  per- 


42    THE  IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

niciously  and  destructively.  Naturalism, 
on  the  other  hand,  has  insisted  on  the 
fact  of  law,  but  from  superficial  thought 
it  has  often  done  so  mechanically,  mate- 
rialistically, and  atheisticaJly,  thus  justify- 
ing the  suspicion  and  dislike  with  which 
it  has  been  regarded.  But  to  complete 
our  thought  and  keep  it  sane  and  sweet, 
both  elements  must  be  united.  Religion 
must  learn  the  lesson  of  law,  and  science 
must  learn  its  limitations.  The  value  of 
naturalism  lies  entirely  in  its  emphasis 
of  law,  and  not  in  the  mistaken  meta- 
physics in  which  naturalism  has  com- 
monly been  set  forth.  We  retain  the 
former  and  discharge  the  latter. 

The  aberration  of  religious  thought  in 
this  matter  has  been  well  set  forth  by 
Buckle  in  his  '*  History  of  Civilization  in 
England,"  by  J.  W.  Draper  in  his  '*  His- 
tory of  the  Intellectual  Development  of 
Europe,"  by  Lecky  in  his  '*  History  of 
Rationalism,"  and  by  Andrew  D.  White 
in  his  "  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science 


GOD  AND  HISTORY  43 

with  Theology."  These  writers  have  not 
always  shown  a  perfect  mastery  of  the 
logic  of  their  facts,  but  they  have  done 
a  great  service  in  showing  what  a  foe  to 
humanity  even  the  Christian  religion  may 
become  in  the  hands  of  a  false  super- 
naturalism  which  eliminates  God  from 
the  realm  of  law  and  finds  him  only  in 
signs  and  wonders.  Happily,  the  more 
intelligent  disciples  have  learned  the  les- 
son ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  more 
intelligent  exponents  of  law  in  nature 
have  outgrown  the  fancy,  once  so  com- 
mon, that  law  is  irreligious  and  atheistic. 
The  devotion  born  of  ignorance  is  now 
discounted,  as  not  especially  pleasing  to 
God  or  creditable  to  man. 

The  presence  of  God  in  nature  does 
not  mean  that  God  is  here  and  there  in 
the  world  performing  miracles,  but  that 
the  whole  cosmic  movement  depends 
constantly  upon  the  divine  will  and  is 
an  expression  of  the  divine  purpose.   In 


44    THE  IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

like  manner  the  presence  of  God  in 
history  does  not  mean  exclusively,  or 
mainly,  that  God  is  working  signs  and 
wonders  upon  occasion,  but  rather  that 
God  is  carrying  on  the  great  historical 
movement  and  working  his  will  therein. 
The  same  false  naturalism  which  has  so 
often  reduced  the  philosophy  of  nature 
to  a  barren  mockery  has  wrought  simi- 
lar effects  in  the  philosophy  of  history. 
Here,  too,  a  doctrine  of  method  has  been 
turned  into  a  doctrine  of  causation,  and 
a  deal  of  sorry  stuff  has  been  said  about 
the  reign  of  law,  and  *'  the  iron  chain  of 
necessity,"  etc. 

And  this  false  naturalism  has  pro- 
duced an  equally  false  supernaturalism. 
Both  alike  have  assumed  a  self-running 
natural  order,  which  excludes  the  super- 
natural except  as  a  thing  of  interposi- 
tions, interferences,  omens,  prodigies,  etc. 
With  this  misunderstanding,  the  believer 
in  God  in  history  has  sought  for  him 
largely  in  strange  and  striking  events,  in 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  45 

historical  crises,  in  marvelous  coinci- 
dences, rather  than  in  the  orderly  move- 
ment and  progress  of  human  life  and 
society.  An  opportune  storm,  a  drought 
or  flood,  a  good  or  bad  harvest,  an  out- 
break of  an  epidemic,  would  be  far  more 
significant  to  many  than  the  greatest 
mental  and  moral  progress  of  society. 
They  are  not  looking  for  God  in  the 
moral  realm,  but  in  the  field  of  physical 
prodigies,  and  have  eyes  for  scarcely 
anything  else.  But  the  great  proof  of 
God*s  presence  in  history  and  the  sole 
significance  of  that  presence  lie  in  the 
mental  and  moral  realm.  The  slow  moral- 
ization  of  life  and  society,  the  enlight- 
enment of  conscience  and  its  growing 
empire,  the  deepening  sense  of  respon- 
sibility for  the  good  order  of  the  world 
and  the  well-being  of  men,  the  gradual 
putting  away  of  old  wrongs  and  foul 
diseases  and  blinding  superstitions, — 
these  are  the  great  proofs  of  God  in  his- 
tory ;  and  in  comparison  with  these  all 


46    THE  IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

physical  miracles  sink  into  insignificance, 
and,  except  as  related  to  these  higher 
interests,  have  no  value  whatever.  It  is 
nothing  less  than  pathetic  to  find  men 
ranging  through  secular  and  religious 
history  seeking  after  a  sign,  instead  of 
fixing  their  thought  upon  this  sign  of 
signs,  —  the  spread  of  reason  and  right- 
eousness in  the  earth. 

And  here  again  the  chief  source  of 
our  trouble  is  the  absentee  conception  of 
God.  What  the  religious  mind  really 
seeks  is  God,  and  when  a  false  philosophy 
has  removed  him  to  an  indefinite  dis- 
tance, and  has  thrust  a  baseless  fiction, 
the  self-running  "  Nature,"  between  him 
and  us,  there  is  no  recourse  but  to  look 
for  God  in  prodigies  and  disorder  in 
general.  This  unhappy  mistake  puts  re- 
ligious thought  in  the  wrong  from  the 
start  and  makes  it  the  enemy  of  enlight- 
enment and  progress,  thus  producing  all 
manner  of  conflicts  of  science  and  re- 
ligion, and  what  is  still  worse,  conflicts 


GOD   AND   HISTORY  47 

of  religion  and  humanity.  A  very  large 
part  of  this  difficulty  is  canceled  by  the 
divine  immanence,  which  allows  us  to 
find  God  as  present  in  the  ordinary  move- 
ments of  life  and  society  as  in  the  strange 
and  uninterpretable  things.  Life  itself, 
with  all  its  normal  forms  and  interests, 
represents  the  divine  will  and  purpose, 
and  from  it  God  is  never  absent.  His  will 
is  being  done  in  and  through  the  laws 
and  movements  of  humanity,  as  it  is 
through  the  laws  and  movements  of 
nature. 

But  as  there  is  a  true  naturalism  in 
physical  study,  so  there  is  a  true  natu- 
ralism in  historical  study.  Without  some 
continuity  of  law,  there  could  be  no 
thought  or  articulate  experience  at  all. 
Even  if  miracles  were  a  part  of  the  order, 
we  cannot  suppose  that  they  would  be 
wrought  at  random  and  without  any  ref- 
erence to  the  antecedents  and  environ- 
ment.  Such  unmediated,  unrelated  mir- 


48    THE  IMMANENCE  OF   GOD 

acks  would  be  irrational  interjections, 
and  not  parts  of  articulate  speech.  Or  if 
freedom  be  a  fact  of  life,  it,  too,  must  be 
related  to  law,  or  it  disappears  into  unin- 
telligible arbitrariness.  Hence,  however 
much  we  may  believe  that  God  is  in  his- 
tory, or  that  man  is  free,  we  must  also 
look  for  rules  of  procedure,  or  the  familiar 
continuities  which  we  call  natural.  We 
may  seek  to  trace  the  laws  of  life  and 
thought  and  development  in  the  progress 
and  unfolding  of  history.  Such  study, 
when  thought  is  clear,  has  no  tendency 
to  reduce  history  to  a  mechanical  se- 
quence. It  merely  reveals  how  things 
hang  together  in  life  and  history  accord- 
ing to  the  experienced  principles  of 
human  and  physical  nature,  and  leaves 
us  as  free  as  ever  to  believe  that  an  un- 
folding purpose  underlies  it  all  as  the 
final  cause  of  the  movement. 

How  hard  it  is  to  realize  this,  or  how 
difficult  it  is  for  religious  thought  to  see 
that  the  divine  activity  in  history  is  not 


GOD  AND  HISTORY  49 

necessarily  unmediated,  finds  interesting 
illustration  in  the  following  from  the  Life 
of  Mr.  Gladstone :  "  He  was  delighted 
(March,  1830)  with  a  university  sermon 
against  Milman's  *  History  of  the  Jews,' 
and  hopes  it  may  be  useful  as  an  anti- 
dote, *for  Milman,  though  I  do  think 
without  intentions  directly  evil,  does  go 
far  enough  to  be  justly  called  a  bane. 
For  instance,  he  says  that  had  Moses 
never  existed,  the  Hebrew  nation  would 
have  remained  a  degraded  pariah  tribe, 
or  been  lost  in  the  mass  of  the  Egyptian 
population  —  and  this  notwithstanding 
the  promise.'  " 

As  this  was  written  when  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  only  twenty  years  old,  we  must 
not  lay  it  up  against  him.  But  it  shows 
that  it  had  not  occurred  to  him  then,  as 
it  has  not  occurred  to  many  since,  that 
"the  promise"  is  one  thing  and  the 
mode  of  fulfillment  another,  and  that  the 
promise  was  fulfilled  through  the  exist- 
ence of  Moses.   We  may  still  believe  in 


so    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

the  promise  after  all  that  Milman  or  any- 
one else  has  said  ;  and  at  the  same  time 
we  may  believe  that  Moses  was  an  im- 
portant factor  in  its  fulfillment.  There  is 
no  more  reason  for  supposing  that  the 
divine  purpose  in  biblical  history  was 
unmediated  than  for  supposing  it  unme- 
diated  in  modern  history.  We  may  well 
suppose  a  divine  purpose  in  our  national 
life,  but  that  does  not  remove  the  fact 
that  it  has  been  realized  in  a  highly 
complex  history,  which  admits  of  being 
studied  by  the  natural  method.  Here  as 
elsewhere  causality  and  method  of  work- 
ing, or  purpose  and  mode  of  realization, 
are  to  be  distinguished.  Nowadays  every 
intelligent  believer  in  "the  promise" 
would  feel  free  to  trace  the  manner  of 
its  fulfillment  in  accordance  with  the  laws 
of  life  and  history.  From  the  standpoint 
of  the  divine  immanence,  God's  familiar 
methods  are  just  as  divine  as  are  his 
other  ways  that  are  "  past  finding  out." 
Two  things,  we  said,  we  need  to  know 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  51 

in  the  study  of  nature  :  first,  the  connec- 
tion of  events  in  an  order  of  law,  and, 
secondly,  their  cause  and  interpretation. 
Similarly,  in  history,  we  need  to  know 
the  order  and  connection  of  events,  and 
also  their  causality  and  interpretation. 
Without  some  knowledge  of  the  order  we 
could  be  only  helpless  savages,  indeed 
we  could  not  even  live  at  all.  But  this 
is  not  enough.  Such  knowledge  alone 
would  keep  us  on  the  surface.  For  the 
full  and  final  understanding  of  the  move- 
ment we  must  know  more  than  these 
historical  and  physical  laws.  We  must 
know  the  cause  and  meaning  and  goal 
of  it  all.  By  eliminating  the  false  natu- 
ralism of  a  mechanical  philosophy,  and 
replacing  it  by  the  true  naturalism  of  the 
divine  immanence,  we  make  it  possible 
for  faith  to  feel  at  home  even  in  the  world 
of  law,  and  indeed  all  the  more  at  home 
because  it  is  a  world  of  law. 

"  God  is  law,  say  the  wise.   O  soul,  and  let  us  rejoice; 
For  if  he  thunder  by  law,  the  thunder  is  still  his 
voice." 


52    THE  IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

It  has  not  been  my  purpose  in  this 
section  to  find  God  in  history,  or  to  illus- 
trate his  presence  in  history,  but  rather 
to  explain  what  that  presence  would  mean 
and  where  we  are  to  seek  it.  There  is  no 
objection  to  finding  God  in  prodigies,  if 
there  be  such  things,  but  it  is  far  more 
important  to  find  him  in  the  normal  ac- 
tivities of  men  and  the  unfoldings  of  his- 
tory. Prodigies  are  vanishing  quantities 
in  any  case,  in  comparison  with  the  his- 
toric life  and  development  of  humanity ; 
and  here  alone  does  the  divine  presence 
have  abiding  significance.  Not  less  of 
God  but  more  is  what  both  religion  and 
philosophy  demand. 

A  divine  purpose,  a  moral  develop- 
ment in  humanity,  is  the  essential  mean- 
ing of  God  in  history.  This  history  is 
the  unfolding  and  realization  of  the  di- 
vine purpose.  We  cannot,  indeed,  trace 
this  purpose  in  all  the  details  of  history, 
and  when  we  begin  to  make  specific  inter- 
pretations, we  are  very  apt  to  go  astray. 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  53 

But  the  existence  of  such  a  purpose  is 
a  necessary  implication  of  theistic  faith. 
Sometimes  the  historical  crisis  is  such, 
and  the  co- working  of  complex  factors  so 
marked,  that  we  seem  to  be  aware  of  a 
divinity  that  shapes  our  ends.  Then  we 
speak  of  a  guiding  or  overruling  Provi- 
dence. But  commonly  life  runs  on  in  the 
familiar  routine,  and  we  seem  left  to  our 
own  judgment  to  find  the  way.  At  such 
times  we  have  nothing  to  say  of  Provi- 
dence. But  it  is  clear  that  the  only  differ- 
ence is  that  sometimes  the  divine  pur- 
pose seems  manifest,  while  at  other  times 
it  is  hidden.  The  purpose,  however,  is 
equally  real  and  equally  controlling  at 
all  times,  though  not  equally  manifest. 
Our  eyes  are  holden  in  this  matter  mainly 
because  of  our  deistic  philosophy  with 
its  self-running  nature  and  absentee  God. 
If  this  philosophy  were  set  aside,  most  of 
our  difficulties  would  disappear  of  them- 
selves. 

Because  of  this  philosophy,  we  are 


54    THE  IMMANENCE  OF   GOD 

compelled  to  look  for  God  in  the  non- 
natural,  and  there  is  always  room  for 
the  suspicion  that  if  we  understood  all 
the  hidden  connections  of  the  event,  we 
should  find  it  to  be  natural,  and  hence 
undivine,  after  all.  This  is  the  universal 
and  stereotyped  form  of  objection.  But 
this  vanishes  when  we  accept  the  divine 
immanence.  Then  we  come  to  a  natural 
which  roots  in  the  supernatural,  and  a 
supernatural  whose  methods  are  natural ; 
and  to  this  neither  science  nor  religion 
has  any  objection. 

The  same  false  philosophy  underlies 
the  objections  to  a  belief  in  a  providential 
guidance  of  the  individual  life,  and  also 
vitiates  the  popular  understanding  of  the 
doctrine.  The  objector  rules  out  the  doc- 
trine and  refers  everything  to  nature; 
and  the  believer  often  holds  it  supersti- 
tiously,  so  as  to  scandalize  both  intelli- 
gence and  conscience. 

A  story  told  of  Archbishop  Whateley 
well  illustrates  the  popular  thought.   A 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  55 

person  was  once  relating  in  Whateley's 
presence  a  case  of  a  wonderful  provi- 
dence. He  had  been  in  a  shipwreck,  and 
every  one  but  himself  had  perished.  This 
seemed  to  him  an  extraordinary  provi- 
dence, and  a  demonstration  of  special 
care  on  the  part  of  God.  Whateley  re- 
plied that  he  knew  of  a  case  more  won- 
derful still.  Some  friends  of  his  had  sailed 
for  some  distant  port  and  all  had  arrived 
safe.  And  not  only  they,  but  all  the  pas- 
sengers, had  arrived  safe.  And  still  more 
wonderful,  the  crew  and  the  vessel  and 
the  cargo  had  arrived  safe  ;  and  no  loss 
of  any  kind  had  been  suffered  during  the 
voyage.  The  safety  of  all  surely  testified 
more  eloquently  of  a  divine  providence 
than  the  bare  escape  of  one. 

And  so  it  would  to  every  one  who  has 
not  been  confused  by  the  false  natural 
and  the  false  supernatural. 

Yet  this  will  undoubtedly  seem  to 
many  to  be  a  mere  fetch,  a  scheme  for 
appearing  to  assert  a  divine  providence 


56    THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

while  really  denying  it.  So  it  must  seem 
to  all  believers  in  an  absentee  God  and 
a  self-running  nature,  which  does  a  lot 
of  unintended  things  on  its  own  account, 
and  as  a  kind  of  mechanical  by-product. 
But  we  can  have  no  further  words  with 
them ;  what  they  need  is  an  intellectual 
new  birth.  They  seek  to  walk  by  sight 
rather  than  faith,  and  they  fancy  that 
God  works  only  through  interpositions 
and  manifest  interferences.  God  in  the 
law  is  beyond  them. 

But  surely,  it  will  be  said,  you  do  not 
believe  in  a  special  providence!  That 
kind  of  thing  has  long  been  obsolete 
in  intelligent  circles.  The  answer  must 
begin  by  inquiring  what  a  special  provi- 
dence may  mean. 

This  word,  special,  has  been  very  much 
used,  almost  overworked,  of  late  years ; 
and  pretty  much  every  one  has  viewed 
it  as  standing  for  an  outgrown  idea. 
Special  creation,  special  providence,  etc., 
are  rejected  as  impossible  conceptions. 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  57 

But  this  is  mostly  confusion,  and  has  its 
root  in  the  fallacy  of  the  universal.  Thus 
with  regard  to  special  creation,  it  is  clear 
that  all  concrete  existence  is,  and  must 
be,  special ;  and  all  creation  of  the  con- 
crete must  be  as  special  as  the  product. 
Special  facts  can  be  produced  only  by 
correspondingly  special  acts.  In  some 
sense  nothing  is  special,  for  everything 
is  a  case  of  a  kind ;  and  in  some  sense 
everything  is  special,  for  it  is  a  particu- 
lar case.  This  is  the  necessary  antithesis 
of  the  individual  and  the  universal.  No 
universal  animal  could  be  created,  but 
only  special  animals.  There  is  no  uni- 
versal man,  but  only  special  men ;  and 
the  creation  of  each  must  be  correspond- 
ingly special.  Of  course  particular  things 
or  events  may  admit  of  being  classed  to- 
gether in  a  general  scheme  of  law ;  and 
as  thus  subordinated  to  a  common  law, 
they  may  be  described  as  not  special. 
But  as  actual  things  or  events,  each  is 
a  special  case,  with  its  own  specific  con- 


58    THE  IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

text  or  coefficient,  and  its  production  de- 
mands a  correspondingly  special  activity. 
In  this  sense  all  individuals  are  special 
creations,  each  of  which  has  its  own  sin- 
gular equation. 

The  same  is  true  of  special  provi- 
dences. If  there  be  any  providence,  it 
must  be  special ;  as  a  providence  in  gen- 
eral would  be  no  providence  at  all,  but 
simply  the  fallacy  of  the  universal  again. 
Any  real  providence  in  our  lives  must 
specify  itself  into  perfectly  definite  and 
special  ordering  of  events,  or  it  vanishes 
altogether.  In  this  sense  all  providences 
are  special  providences,  or  they  are  no- 
thing. 

Here  again  the  divine  immanence 
helps  us.  If  there  be  purpose  in  any- 
thing, there  is  purpose  in  everything. 
The  creative  plan  must  include  all  its 
details,  and  the  immanent  creative  will 
must  specifically  realize  all  its  special 
demands.  Both  philosophy  and  religion 
unite  in  this  view.   Philosophy  shuts  us 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  59 

up  to  it,  and  it  is  a  postulate  of  religion. 
But  both  philosophy  and  religion  also 
unite  in  rejecting  a  doctrine  of  special 
providence  which  implies  that  things  go 
their  own  way  for  the  most  part,  and 
that  God  now  and  then  intervenes  in  a 
striking  fashion  for  his  favorites.  On 
the  view  of  the  divine  immanence,  events 
are  supernatural  in  their  causality  and 
natural  in  the  order  of  their  happenings  ; 
and  a  so-called  special  providence  would 
be  simply  an  event  in  which  the  divine 
purpose  and  causality  which  are  in  all 
things  could  be  more  clearly  traced,  or 
would  more  markedly  appear,  than  in 
more  familiar  matters.  But  when  we 
know  that  divine  wisdom  and  love  are 
in  all  things,  we  are  less  concerned  about 
"  special  interventions." 

In  the  sense  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  that  not  a  sparrow  falls  to  the 
ground  without  the  Father,  we  may  all 
believe  in  special  providences  ;  indeed, 
this  is  a  necessary  part  of  any  intelli- 


6o    THE   IMMANENCE  OF   GOD 

gent  faith  in  God.  Every  life  is  included 
in  the  divine  plan  ;  and  every  life  is  as 
intimately  near  and  present  to  the  divine 
thought  and  care  as  it  would  be  if  all  the 
rest  were  away.  When  we  reason  from 
our  feeble  powers,  we  think  God  must 
grow  weary  and  forget.  When  we  rea- 
son from  our  vulgar  notions  of  greatness, 
we  fancy  that  God,  being  so  great,  must 
ignore  us  altogether.  When  we  are  tan- 
gled in  verbal  snares,  we  fancy  that  God 
deals  only  with  universals,  classes,  and 
laws,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  indi- 
vidual cases  and  details.  But  when  we 
really  reason,  whether  philosophically  or 
religiously,  these  illusions  vanish,  and 
we  see  that  we  are  in  the  hands  of  him 
that  made  us,  and  that  all  things  and 
events  immediately  depend  on  him.  We 
may  not  be  able  to  interpret  his  purpose 
in  all  or  even  in  many  of  the  events  of 
our  lives,  but  the  purpose  is  there  never- 
theless, and  we  must  wait  for  its  unfold- 
ing. 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  6i 

In  a  striking  passage  in  "The  Old 
Faith  and  the  New,"  Strauss  has  told  us 
what  an  awful  sense  of  abandonment 
attends  the  giving  up  of  this  faith  in 
providence.  He  says,  "  In  the  enormous 
machine  of  the  universe,  amid  the  inces- 
sant whiri  and  hiss  of  its  jagged  iron 
wheels,  amid  the  deafening  crash  of  its 
ponderous  stamps  and  hammers,  in  the 
midst  of  this  whole  terrific  commotion, 
man,  a  helpless  and  defenseless  crea- 
ture, finds  himself  placed,  not  secure 
for  a  moment  that,  on  an  imprudent 
motion,  a  wheel  may  not  seize  and  rend 
him  or  a  hammer  crush  him  to  pow- 
der. This  sense  of  abandonment  is  at 
first  something  awful."  Of  this  engag- 
ing universe  he  elsewhere  in  the  work 
says,  "  We  demand  the  same  piety  for 
our  cosmos  that  the  devout  of  old  de- 
manded for  his  God ; "  and  he  rebuked 
Schopenhauer  and  Hartmann  for  their 
pessimistic  utterances  as  "  blasphemous." 
This  led  to  a  trenchant  retort  from  Hart- 


62    THE  IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

mann,  who  did  not  fail  to  point  out  that 
"piety"  towards  this  ** enormous  ma- 
chine "  would  be  misplaced. 

Bacon  says,  "  I  had  rather  believe  all 
the  fables  in  the  Legend,  and  the  Tal- 
mud, and  the  Alcoran,  than  that  this 
universal  frame  is  without  a  mind."  Sim- 
ilarly, I  had  rather  believe  all  the  fanati- 
cal and  superstitious  interpretations  of 
the  divine  providence  which  have  been 
the  opprobrium  of  history,  than  to  hold 
that  there  is  no  guiding  purpose  and 
power  in  the  great  movement  of  human- 
ity or  in  the  smaller  field  of  the  individ- 
ual life.  But  there  is  no  need  to  make 
the  choice.  We  may  believe  that  God  is 
in  all  things  and  that  all  things  are  in 
him,  and  that  his  will  is  being  done,  in 
spite  of  Strauss' s  nightmare  about  the 
"  enormous  machine."  At  the  same  time 
we  must  guard  against  dogmatic  and 
confident  interpretations  of  the  purpose 
in  events.  Here  is  where  the  doctrine 
of  providence  so  often  becomes  a  scan- 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  63 

dal  to  good  sense  and  reverence ;  as 
when  the  missionaries  who  escaped  the 
Chinese  Boxers  were  said  to  have  been 
"  providentially  saved,"  leaving  us  a 
little  at  a  loss  what  to  think  of  those  who 
were  massacred.  Was  there  no  provi- 
dence for  them  ?  Such  a  view  would  prove 
embarrassing  if  thought  out.  This  doc- 
trine of  the  divine  care  can  be  held  only 
in  connection  with  God's  eternal  plan, 
and  needs  eternity  for  its  full  vindication. 
It  is  a  long-range  doctrine,  —  for  faith 
and  not  for  sight.  God's  providence  in- 
volves failure  as  well  as  success,  loss  as 
well  as  gain,  sickness  as  well  as  health, 
bereavement  as  well  as  restoration.  The 
ninety-first  Psalm  expresses  our  expecta- 
tion, but  the  eighth  of  Romans  expresses 
the  fact.  In  the  former,  no  evil  is  to  be- 
fall us  and  no  plague  is  to  come  nigh  our 
dwelling ;  in  the  latter,  we  have  all  man- 
ner of  troubles,  but  come  off  more  than 
conquerors.  Unless  we  take  this  larger 
view,  the  doctrine  of  a  divine  providence 


64    THE   IMMANENCE  OF   GOD 

is  a  hindrance  and  exasperation,  unwor- 
thy of  both  God  and  man,  and  continu- 
ally rejected  by  experience.  But  for  this 
larger  view  there  is  value  in  the  doc- 
trine of  divine  immanence.  It  removes 
the  plausible  but  fictitious  objections  to 
belief  that  spring  out  of  the  notion  of  the 
absentee  God.  We  are  in  our  Father's 
hands,  though  we  cannot  comprehend  the 
mystery  of  his  ways.  We  must  work  out 
our  own  salvation,  and  at  the  same  time 
we  may  believe  that  it  is  God  who  work- 
eth  in  us  to  will  and  do  of  his  own  good 
pleasure.  It  is  a  great  aid  to  faith  to  be 
clear  of  the  "  enormous  machine,"  and  to 
see  that  nature  itself  is  providence. 

It  will  be  a  great  step  forward  when 
religious  thought  is  adjusted  to  this  con- 
ception, when  we  see  the  divine  caus- 
ality in  all  things  and  the  naturalness  of 
the  divine  working,  and  when  instead  of 
melodramatic  irruptions  from  without 
we  have  orderly  unfoldings  from  within 
along  the  lines  of  familiar  law  and  influ- 


GOD  AND   HISTORY  65 

ence.  If  our  daily  bread  came  to  us  by 
raven  express,  or  by  a  great  sheet  let 
down  from  the  skies,  it  would  be  no  more 
divinely  sent  than  it  is  when  it  comes 
through  the  springing  grass,  or  the  grow- 
ing com,  or  the  ripening  harvest.  Simi- 
larly, God  works  his  will  in  history  not 
apart  from  men,  but  through  men  and 
in  partnership  with  them  ;  and  the  work 
is  no  less  divine  on  that  account.  An 
angel  flying  abroad  through  the  skies 
to  preach  the  everlasting  gospel  would 
amazingly  tickle  the  spiritual  ground- 
ling, but  devoted  men  and  women,  speak- 
ing from  heart  to  heart  in  our  human 
speech  of  the  good  news  of  God,  would 
be  quite  as  divine  and  more  effective. 
For  if  they  hear  not  Moses  and  the 
prophets,  they  would  not  be  persuaded 
though  one  rose  from  the  dead. 


Ill 

GOD  AND  THE  BIBLE 

The  false  naturalism  of  a  mechanical 
philosophy  has  nowhere  wrought  greater 
confusion  than  in  our  thought  of  the 
Bible.  Both  friends  and  foes  have  been 
under  its  influence,  and  thus  the  prob- 
lem has  been  falsified  from  the  start. 
The  friends  have  sought  to  show  that, 
over  and  above  all  natural  agencies,  a 
supernatural  factor  must  be  affirmed. 
The  foes  have  sought  to  reduce  the 
Bible  to  a  purely  natural  product.  Nei- 
ther party  suspected  that  the  natural 
might  be  only  the  form  of  a  supernatu- 
ral causality,  and  that  the  supernatural 
might  be  the  ever-present  source  and 
ground  of  the  natural.  With  such  a 
philosophy  the  result  could  be  only  a 
drawn  battle,  closely  resembling  a  scuffle 
between  blind  men. 


GOD  AND  THE   BIBLE         67 

A  prominent  writer  in  a  recent  num- 
ber of  the  **  Homiletic  Review  "  has  the 
following  respecting  the  naturalistic  view 
of  Christianity  :  **  It  claims  to  prove  that 
the  religious  teachings  of  the  sacred  rec- 
ords, both  of  the  old  and  new  covenant, 
are  a  gradual  development,  chiefly  or  en- 
tirely from  natural  causes,  to  the  greater 
or  less,  or  even  the  entire,  exclusion  of 
supernatural  agencies."  Similarly,  a  dis- 
tinguished professor  of  theology  has 
recently  told  us  that  Christianity  is  no 
development  or  evolution,  but  a  piece 
of  information  supernaturally  communi- 
cated. If  it  be  not  that,  it  is  nothing. 
And  still  another  dignitary,  who  seems 
to  be  a  pillar,  declares  in  megaphonic 
utterance  and  with  all  the  air  of  finality, 
"  I  believe  in  the  supernatural  book." 

As  against  a  false  naturalism,  these 
statements  have  an  assignable  meaning 
and  are  justified.  As  against  a  true  nat- 
uralism, even  their  meaning  is  not  evi- 
dent, and  they  manifestly  rest  on  a  false 


68    THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

naturalism.  There  is  a  fear  of  develop- 
ment, of  evolution,  of  natural  agencies; 
and  there  is  the  tacit  admission  that 
these  things  so  far  as  allowed  are  sub- 
tractions from,  or  denials  of,  the  super- 
natural. That  this  has  been  the  assump- 
tion in  most  discussion  of  this  subject 
is  familiar  to  every  reader.  But  in  all 
this  the  notion  of  a  self-running  nature 
and  an  absentee  God  peeps  through. 
God  is  supposed  to  be  needed  only  for 
supplementing  the  inadequacies  of  na- 
ture ;  and  if  nature  be  adequate,  God  is 
needless.  The  logic  of  the  position  neces- 
sitates a  polemic  against  naturalism.  But 
all  these  fears  and  distresses  would  van- 
ish if  God  were  seen  to  be  immanent  in 
all  development,  all  evolution,  and  all 
natural  agencies.  Evidently  a  profounder 
philosophy  is  needed. 

The  thought  of  God's  immanence  in 
nature  and  history,  of  a  divine  purpose 
realizing  itself  through  law,  has  equal 


GOD  AND  THE  BIBLE        69 

significance  for  our  thought  of  the  Bible. 
The  great  desire  of  religion  is  to  find 
God,  and  it  has  been  so  zealous  for  a 
crude  supernaturalism  of  signs  and  won- 
ders mainly  because  it  was  supposed 
that  the  reality  of  God's  existence  and 
presence  could  not  otherwise  be  secured. 
No  one  would  ever  have  the  slightest  in- 
terest in  Balaam's  ass,  or  Jonah's  whale, 
or  the  talking  serpent,  or  the  rib  that 
was  made  into  a  woman,  unless  it  were 
thought  that  to  question  these  things 
would  lead  to  "bald  naturalism,"  that 
is,  to  atheism.  The  divine  immanence, 
rightly  understood,  helps  to  relieve  this 
fear. 

The  supernatural  features  of  the  Bible 
history  on  this  view  are  no  more  divine 
in  their  causality  than  the  routine  events 
of  every  day.  They  would  be  simply 
extraordinary  events  which,  from  their 
form  or  the  circumstances  of  their  occur- 
rence, would  make  the  divine  presence 
and  purpose  more  manifest  than  is  the 


70   THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

case  with  familiar  matters.  They  would 
be  signs,  or  calls  for  attention,  which 
might  be  made  necessary  by  the  mental 
and  spiritual  dullness  of  men.  The  tra- 
ditional discussion  has  been  made  void 
by  the  traditional  confusion  about  na- 
ture. Believers  have  often  thought  to 
mend  matters  by  saying  that  "  miracles 
are  not  wrought  against  nature,  but 
against  nature  as  it  is  known."  "  Mira- 
cles are  occurrences  according;  to  laws 
higher  than  any  yet  known."  They  are 
really  cases  of  human  ignorance  rather 
than  of  divine  interference.  But  such 
utterances  are  either  "  bald  naturalism," 
furnished  with  a  wig,  or  else  they  are  de- 
clarations that  miracles  are  not  wrought 
at  random,  but  must  have  a  sufficient 
reason,  —  a  view  which  no  intelligent 
believer  in  miracles  would  deny. 

Unbelievers,  on  the  other  hand,  have 
generally  denied  the  miracles  outright, 
or  have  reduced  them  to  misunderstood 
natural  events.   Earthquakes,  landslides, 


GOD  AND  THE  BIBLE        71 

volcanoes,  catalepsy,  resuscitation,  hyp- 
notism, etc.,  serve  to  explain  all  the  facts. 
But  these  speculators  fail  to  show  how 
these  familiar  experiences  could  explain 
the  concrete  historical  results  which  fol- 
lowed. The  song  of  the  angels  may  have 
been  an  hallucination  of  the  shepherds  ; 
but  it  is  the  only  time  before  or  since  that 
shepherds  were  so  divinely  hallucinated. 
St.  Paul  may  have  had  a  fit  on  his  way 
to  Damascus,  but  it  is  the  only  known  fit 
that  had  such  mighty  consequences.  The 
vision  of  the  Risen  One  may  have  been 
an  illusion,  but  when  we  see  that  it  is  the 
greatest  event  in  all  history,  we  begin  to 
wonder  whether  illusions  can  be  so  po- 
tent. In  that  case,  surely,  things  that  are 
not  are  mightier  than  the  things  that  are. 
Both  believers  and  unbelievers  have 
done  some  pretty  superficial  work  on 
this  subject.  They  have  discussed  at 
length  the  possibility  of  proving  a  mir- 
acle by  testimony,  and  have  generally 
lost  themselves  in  abstractions.   On  the 


72    THE  IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

one  hand,  it  was  held  that  testimony 
enough  would  prove  anything,  for  we 
have  only  to  pile  up  the  testimony  long 
enough,  and  its  falsehood  will  be  a  greater 
wonder  than  the  miracle  itself.  To  this 
it  was  rejoined  that  testimony  might  con- 
ceivably prove  the  occurrence  of  an  ex- 
traordinary event,  but  could  never  prove 
it  to  be  a  miracle !  Hume,  after  con- 
structing his  famous  argument,  in  which 
he  opposes  uniform  experience  to  testi- 
mony, proceeds  to  limit  the  statement 
by  saying  "  that  a  miracle  can  never 
be  proved  so  as  to  be  the  foundation  of 
a  system  of  religion.  For  I  own  that 
otherwise  there  may  possibly  be  mira- 
cles, or  violations  of  the  usual  course 
of  nature,  of  such  a  kind  as  to  admit  of 
proof  from  human  testimony."  Hume 
here  recants  his  entire  argumentation, 
but  then  he  never  was  careful  about 
consistency. 

But  such  questions  have  only  academic 
existence.   Abstract  and  unrelated  won- 


GOD   AND   THE   BIBLE        73 

ders  might  conceivably  be  proved  by  ab- 
stract testimony  to  abstract  believers,  but 
no  living  belief  was  ever  produced  in  this 
way.  The  unbeliever,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  commonly  confined  himself  to  the 
physical  miracle,  and  has  failed  to  see 
that  his  denial  only  relocates  the  wonder 
without  removing  it.  If  we  make  it  sub- 
jective only,  meaning  thereby  illusory, 
we  have  to  explain  how  illusions  came 
to  be  so  potent,  and  we  have  our  labor 
for  naught.  To  recur  to  the  song  of  the 
shepherds,  it  is  not  so  strange  that  shep- 
herds should  see  lights  and  hear  voices, 
but  such  lights  and  such  voices,  com- 
bined into  such  a  vision  and  such  a  song  I 
Here  is  the  real  wonder  ;  and  the  won- 
der is  equally  great  if  we  make  it  sub- 
jective, for  there  was  nothing  in  the  com- 
mon thought  and  expectation  of  these 
men  to  shape  the  vision  into  the  good 
news  of  God.  If  any  one  thinks  other- 
wise, let  him  experiment  with  a  few  cow- 
boys or  fishermen,  and  see  if  they  will 


74    THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

see  or  hear  anything  like  the  shepherds' 
vision  or  the  angels'  song.  Again,  if 
nothing  had  come  out  of  it,  we  might 
well  persuade  ourselves  that  Mary  or 
the  disciples  were  hallucinated  in  their 
belief  that  they  had  seen  their  risen 
Lord ;  but  too  much  came  out  of  it  for 
any  one  with  a  sense  of  reality  long  to 
rest  in  such  a  notion.  After  all,  history 
cannot  be  based  on  fictions. 

There  is,  however,  a  scruple  which 
emerges  here  from  the  depths  of  specu- 
lation, and  which  may  be  worthy  of  con- 
sideration by  both  parties.  When  we  ask 
what  is  real  and  what  unreal  in  objective 
knowledge,  we  commonly  fall  back  on 
sense  presentation  as  the  sole  mark  of 
reality.  That  is  real  which  is  there  for 
the  senses  of  all ;  and  all  else  is  illusion. 
For  the  routine  life  of  every-day  fact  this 
test  is  all-sufficient,  but  it  becomes  very 
doubtful  when  made  absolute  and  uni- 
versal. There  is  not  the  slightest  specu- 
lative warrant  for  making  our  senses  the 


GOD   AND   THE  BIBLE        75 

measure  of  reality  ;  neither  is  there  any 
warrant  for  saying  the  range  of  percep- 
tion must  be  the  same  in  all.  If  there 
were  persons,  otherwise  sane  and  normal, 
who  professed  an  awareness  of  things 
beyond  the  common  sense  range,  we 
should  have  no  good  reason  for  question- 
ing the  fact.  There  might  be  visions  and 
voices  for  the  spirit  and  in  the  spirit  be- 
yond all  common  seeing  and  hearing ; 
and  they  might  carry  with  them  the  same 
conviction  of  independent  reality  that  we 
have  in  our  common  sense  life.  Or,  since 
voice  and  vision  are  too  suggestive  of 
sense  organs,  let  us  say  that  there  might 
be  a  spiritual  awareness  of  reality  beyond 
sense  which  should  be  a  revelation  that 
could  never  be  judged  or  tested  by  sense. 
The  condition  of  such  perception  might 
also  be  a  certain  preparedness  of  spirit, 
as  the  sea  can  reflect  the  heavens  above 
it  only  when  its  waters  are  at  peace.  But 
the  gist  and  test  of  all  perception  is  the 
conviction  of  reality  that  accompanies  it. 


ye    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

This  can  never  be  deduced  from  any- 
thing else  or  referred  to  anything  else. 
And  if  there  were  such  awareness  of 
things  beyond  sense,  it  could  be  described 
only  in  sense  terms,  and  would  thus  be 
liable  to  misunderstanding.  We  should 
try  to  judge  it  by  sense,  when  it  might 
transcend  sense  altogether.  Reflections 
of  this  kind  might  lead  both  the  believer 
and  the  unbeliever  to  see  that  the  sense 
test  is  not  certainly  final. 

Of  course  it  is  well  understood  that 
many  of  the  Biblical  descriptions  of  su- 
pernatural events  are  written  from  the 
standpoint  of  causality.  They  represent 
the  author's  faith  that  God  was  at  work, 
and  hence  the  events  were  directly  re- 
ferred to  God  as  the  agent  without  any 
thought  of  natural  law.  They  are  inter- 
pretations rather  than  descriptions ;  and 
while  they  may  be  quite  correct  as  in- 
terpretations, they  are  misleading  to  us 
with  our  occidental  habits  of  thought  and 


GOD   AND   THE   BIBLE        J7 

speech,  as  we  mistake  them  for  descrip- 
tions. If  one  of  those  old  authors  had 
written  modern  history,  he  would  doubt- 
less have  filled  it  as  full  of  divine  sayings 
and  doings  as  Jewish  history.  "The 
Lord  said  unto  His  servant,"  the  king,  or 
the  general,  or  the  preacher,  or  the  presi- 
dent. "The  Lord  sent"  the  pestilence, 
or  the  flood,  or  the  plague  of  grasshop- 
pers, or  the  famine,  or  the  earthquake. 
So  it  would  have  run ;  and  in  the  causal 
sense  it  would  have  been  true  ;  but  there 
would  have  been  no  scenic  manifesta- 
tions in  connection  with  the  events.  And 
there  is  no  reason  for  thinking  otherwise 
of  very  many  of  the  Bible  narratives 
of  this  sort.  They  are  oriental  modes 
of  expressing  a  strong  conviction  of 
God's  presence  and  activity.  The  an- 
cient plague  of  locusts  probably  looked 
the  same  as  a  modern  plague  of  locusts.  1/ 
We  may  well  believe  that  God  sent  the 
plague  in  both  cases,  but  we  conceive 
the  phenomenal  form  of  the  visitation 


y8    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

in  a  different  way.    We  have  to  distin- 
guish the  causality  from  the  method. 

The  familiar  forms  of  religious  speech 
make  this  distinction  easy.  We  ascribe 
many  things  to  God  without  intending  to 
affirm  any  miraculous  manifestation.  A 
person  of  devout  habit  of  thought  and 
speech  might  convince  himself  that  min- 
isterial appointments  are  made  by  the 
Lord,  or  that  General  Conference  elec- 
tions are  divinely  guided  ;  but  if  he  should 
be  present  at  the  Conference  sessions, 
he  would  find  that  this  divine  causality 
is  for  faith  rather  than  sight,  and  that  in 
the  phenomenal  manifestation  the  con- 
tinuity and  uniformity  of  experience  are 
abundantly  illustrated  and  verified.  The 
mind  of  the  Spirit  is  commonly  revealed 
only  in  the  vote ;  and  even  then  there  are 
hearts  that  are  hardened  by  unbelief. 
"In  theory,"  Froude  says,  speaking  of 
the  council  of  Trent,  **  ecumenical  coun- 
cils are  controlled  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  but 
neither  Charles  nor  Paul  [the  emperor 


GOD   AND   THE   BIBLE        79 

and  the  Pope]  seemed  practically  to  ex- 
pect such  high  assistance.  A  profane 
father  at  the  council  itself  said  that  the 
Holy  Spirit  would  come  to  them  from 
Rome  in  the  courier's  bag."  Such  facts 
clearly  show  the  need  of  distinguishing 
between  the  essential  causality  and  the 
method  of  procedure.  If  one  were  never 
so  sure  that  the  Holy  Spirit  controls 
councils,  the  method  of  control  would 
still  remain  an  open  question ;  and  the 
mind  of  the  Spirit  might  be  revealed 
through  the  vote  of  the  council,  or  even 
through  the  **  courier's  bag,"  as  well  as 
in  other  ways.  The  faith  in  divine  caus- 
ality in  no  way  conflicts  with  natural- 
ness of  method.  Of  course  there  may  be 
methods  and  results  which  exclude  the 
thought  of  a  divine  causality,  or  at  least 
of  divine  approval.  God  in  his  wrath 
gave  Israel  a  king,  and  he  sometimes 
punishes  wrongdoers  by  other  wrong- 
doers, who  are  guiltier  still. 

But  after  we  have  made  all  allowance 


8o    THE  IMMANENCE  OF   GOD 

on  this  account,  and  have  also  admitted 
that  ancient  myth  and  legend  may  have 
crept  in  here  and  there,  there  will  still 
remain  a  central  history  from  which  the 
miraculous  supernatural  cannot  be  elim- 
^  inated  without  canceling  the  history.  Of 
course  on  this  subject  strictly  decisive 
demonstration  cannot  be  expected.  The 
facts  are  too  far  away  to  make  much 
impression  on  us  except  as  they  are 
embodied  in  present  history,  and  in  any 
case  it  can  be  only  a  matter  of  interpreta- 
tion of  the  facts.  And  here  our  presup- 
positions will  determine  our  conclusions. 
Atheism  of  course  vacates  the  discussion, 
but  it  equally  vacates  science,  and  even 
reason  itself.  There  can  be  a  rational 
discussion  of  this  topic  only  on  a  theistic 
basis.  God,  as  the  absolute  source  of  all 
finite  existence,  is  bound  by  nothing  but 
his  own  wisdom  and  goodness.  What 
they  dictate,  that  he  does.  If  they  call 
for  uniformity,  there  is  uniformity.  If 
they  call  for  change,  there  is  change. 


GOD   AND   THE  BIBLE        8i 

God  never  acts  against  nature  because, 
for  him,  there  is  no  nature  to  act  against. 
His  purpose,  founded  in  his  wisdom  and 
goodness,  is  alone  law-giving  for  his 
action,  and  all  else,  whatever  it  may  be, 
is  but  the  expression  of  that  purpose. 
Nature,  conceived  as  a  barrier  to  God, 
or  as  something  with  which  God  must 
reckon,  is  a  pure  fiction,  a  product  of 
unclear  thought  which  has  lost  itself  in 
abstractions.  If,  in  addition,  we  conceive 
God  as  our  Father  who  is  training  us  as 
his  children  in  a  moral  universe,  we  shall 
have  little  difficulty  in  believing  that 
at  times  he  has  come,  and  comes,  near 
enough  to  convince  us  of  his  presence. 
But  if  we  do  not  share  this  conviction,  no 
historical  or  other  evidence  will  avail  to 
establish  our  faith.  Everything  depends 
on  our  presuppositions.  If  for  us  God  is 
a  personal  and  moral  being,  and  if  his 
supreme  aim  in  human  creation  is  a  moral 
one,  we  shall  have  no  apriori  hostility  to 
miracle.    If  we  believe  in  a  God  in  whom 


S2    THE  IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being, 
and  if  we  believe  that  we  may  and  do 
enter  into  fellowship  and  communion 
with  him  in  prayer  and  holy  living,  it 
will  seem  to  us  the  most  natural  thing  in 
the  world  that  there  should  be  tokens  of 
his  presence.  The  size  of  the  manifesta- 
tion will  be  irrelevant.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  there  is  for  us  no  God,  of  course 
there  will  be  no  miracle,  for  the  logical 
conditions  of  miracle  will  be  lacking. 
We  shall  likely  keep  on  talking  about 
"science,"  and  "iron  chains  of  neces- 
sity," and  the  "fixed  order  of  nature," 
without  suspicion  of  our  logical  naked- 
ness, and  hence  without  the  appropriate 
shame.  Logically,  when  we  are  without 
God,  we  must  be  without  hope  and  also 
without  both  science  and  faith. 

Our  theistic  belief  may  at  times  betray 
us  into  credulity ;  but  this  credulity  might 
be  more  to  our  credit  than  the  opposite 
incredulity  that  would  turn  even  a  voice 
from  heaven  into  common  thunder.   Our 


GOD  AND   THE   BIBLE        83 

readiness  to  accept  rumors  of  a  friend's 
good  works  may  lead  to  hasty  belief  at 
times,  but  that  is  better  than  a  too  cool 
and  cautious  weighing  of  evidence  lest 
we  credit  our  friend  too  soon.  Not  logic 
but  the  historic  life  of  humanity  must  de- 
cide these  questions.  As  Dr.  Shedd  used 
to  say,  a  great  and  consistent  system  is 
its  own  best  support  and  proof.  So  far 
as  the  Christian  miracles  fit  into  the 
Christian  thought  of  a  divine  revelation 
of  grace  and  are  worthy  factors  of  it, 
they  will  never  long  suffer  eclipse.  This 
•system  with  its  past  history  and  future 
outlook  is  its  own  proof.  Whatever  dog- 
matism may  say,  science  has  no  objection 
to  it.  Historical  investigation  will  never 
do  away  with  it.  And  so  long  as  it 
proves  itself  the  power  of  God  unto  sal- 
vation, men  will  believe  in  it,  —  miracles 
and  all.  It  will  never  long  be  recom- 
mended to  faith  by  diminishing  its  mirac- 
ulous character,  for  when  it  comes  to  be- 
lieving, we  insist  on  believing  something 


84    THE  IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

worth  while.  There  is  no  attraction  in  a 
minimum  of  beUef,  provided  the  beUef  be 
really  worth  believing.  Of  course  these 
considerations  apply  only  to  the  funda- 
mental miraculous  features  of  the  system. 

For  us  who  live  to-day  the  important 
thing  about  Christianity  is  that  it  is  a 
revelation  of  God,  what  he  is  and  what 
he  means,  what  he  has  done  and  is  doing 
for  us,  what  our  life  means  and  what  our 
destiny  is  to  be.  This  revelation  makes 
it  humanity's  supreme  treasure.  This 
revelation  is  to  be  understood  only  in 
its  history ;  and  whatever  in  that  history 
is  necessary  for  its  understanding,  be  it 
miracle  or  what  not,  we  shall  retain. 
Neither  science,  nor  philosophy,  nor  his- 
torical criticism  can  take  it  away.  But 
this  history  is  to  be  studied  as  a  whole, 
not  merely  in  its  crude  beginnings  or  in 
its  miraculous  attendants,  but  also  and 
more  especially  in  the  moral  and  spirit- 
ual grandeur  of  its  outcome.   The  pre- 


GOD   AND   THE   BIBLE        85 

sent  world-historical  fact  must  be  the 
starting-point  of  our  inquiry,  as  it  is  the 
only  thing  which  makes  inquiry  worth 
while.  If  Christianity  were  not  a  world- 
power,  a  great  spiritual  force  here  and 
now,  its  origin  and  history  would  be  a 
matter  of  profound  indifference  to  all  but 
a  few  antiquarians.  The  miracles,  too, 
are  to  be  studied  in  connection  with  the 
history,  and  not  as  isolated  and  detached 
wonders.  Miracles  without  moral  mean- 
ing and  religious  bearing  have  as  little 
credibility  as  the  exploits  of  Jack,  the 
Giant  Killer,  or  the  story  of  Aladdin's 
lamp.  Matthew  Arnold's  pen  turned  into 
a  pen-wiper,  or  Professor  Huxley's  cen- 
taur trotting  down  Regent  Street,  be- 
longs to  this  class.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  will  be  nothing  antecedently  im- 
probable to  the  Christian  mind  and  heart 
in  deeds  which  reveal  the  Father's  pre- 
sence within  and  behind  the  law,  and 
which  throw  light  upon  his  character 
and  purpose. 


86    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

Whatever  in  Biblical  history  does  not 
meet  this  general  requirement  will  prob- 
ably go,  and  there  will  be  no  loss  in  its 
v/  going.  Whatever  significance  it  may 
have  had  for  the  times  of  ancient  igno- 
rance, it  has  lost  significance  for  us.  The 
physical  wonder  is  increasingly  unim- 
portant. If  we  admit  its  occurrence,  we 
are  unable  to  make  any  use  of  it.  If  the 
ass  did  speak,  or  the  axe  did  swim,  we 
do  not  seem  to  be  religiously  or  other- 
wise advanced  thereby.  Our  present 
thought  of  the  supernatural  is  rising 
from  the  physical  to  the  ethical  and 
spiritual.  Whatever  significance  the  phy- 
sical wonder  may  have  had  for  the  times 
of  spiritual  dullness  and  ignorance,  which 
could  understand  nothing  else,  it  is  be- 
coming increasingly  unimportant  for  us. 
Devout  and  intelligent  thought  has  little 
interest  nowadays  in  thaumaturgy,  by 
whomsoever  it  might  be  wrought,  but 
rather  places  increasing  emphasis  on  the 
spiritual  miracle  of  God's  life  in  the  soul 


GOD  AND  THE  BIBLE        Z7 

and  the  realization  of  his  kingdom  on 
the  earth,  as  the  only  thing  really  worth 
while,  or  worthy  of  God. 

In  any  case,  the  discussion  of  this 
question  must  be  carried  on  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  divine  immanence. 
When  the  false  naturalism  of  unbelief  is 
eliminated,  supernaturalism  will  be  less 
disturbed  if  historical  criticism  should 
cast  doubt  upon  details.  It  is  no  longer 
a  question  of  divine  causality,  but  of 
method.  Belief  need  not  fear  evolution, 
or  development,  or  natural  agencies, 
when  it  is  seen  that  the  divine  will  and 
purpose  underlie  them  all,  and  that  they 
are  really  nothing  but  the  form  of  the  di-  1/ 
vine  working.  And  unbelief,  on  the  other 
hand,  must  not  be  thought  to  have  tri- 
umphed because  natural  methods  are 
traced  in  the  supernatural  revelation. 

But  as  there  is  a  true  naturalism  in 
the  study  of  both  nature  and  history,  so 
there  may  be  a  true  naturalism  in  the 


88    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

study  of  the  Bible  and  our  Christian 
revelation.  Even  when  we  come  to  the 
distinctly  miraculous,  we  cannot  suppose 
it  to  break  with  all  law.  We  can  under- 
stand miracles  as  signs  whereby  sense- 
bound  minds  are  made  aware  of  a  divine 
power  and  purpose  which  they  would 
otherwise  miss,  in  their  subjection  to  the 
mechanical  movement  of  nature ;  but  we 
cannot  suppose  them  wrought  at  ran- 
dom, and  without  any  reference  to  the 
antecedents  and  environment.  Thus  if 
we  suppose  God  should  design  to  make  a 
revelation  of  higher  mathematical  truth, 
even  by  way  of  miracle,  it  is  clear  that 
the  miracle  would  not  be  wrought  among 
the  Patagonians  or  Hottentots,  but  rather 
there  where  the  development  of  civili- 
zation and  of  mathematical  knowledge 
had  made  a  place  for  the  reception  of 
the  revelation.  Even  seed  divinely  sown 
needs  a  prepared  soil,  if  there  is  to  be  any 
worthy  fruitage;  and  thorny  and  stony 
ground  does  not  furnish  such  a  soil. 


GOD  AND   THE   BIBLE        89 

To  continue  this  passage,  which  is 
borrowed  from  the  author's  essay,  "The 
Christian  Revelation,"  it  is  plain  that 
the  revealing  movement  admits  of  being 
studied  from  the  natural  standpoint ;  that 
is,  we  may  seek  to  trace  the  familiar 
laws  of  life  and  thought  and  history 
and  human  development  in  the  pro- 
gress and  unfolding  of  the  movement. 
Assuming  that  God  was  revealing  him- 
self in  Jewish  history  and  in  the  lives 
and  thoughts  of  holy  men,  it  is  still 
permitted  to  inquire  whether  this  revela- 
tion breaks  with  all  known  historical  and 
psychological  laws,  or  whether  we  can 
trace  even  in  revelation  laws  with  which 
we  are  elsewhere  familiar.  And  there  is 
nothing  in  such  study  to  eliminate  the 
supernatural,  or  to  make  the  presence  of 
the  divine  any  less  real  or  undeniable. 
If  we  find  Paul's  thought  growing  and 
changing  with  unfolding  experience,  if 
we  find  the  development  of  the  church 
led  by  circumstances  into  new  channels, 


90    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

no  one  need  be  disturbed  thereby  who 
has  not  banished  God  from  life  and  his- 
tory ahogether.  On  the  contrary,  such 
study  lends  an  absorbing  human  and 
rational  interest  to  the  problem,  which  is 
impossible  when  the  human  is  paralyzed 
by  the  divine,  and  the  natural  is  dis- 
placed by  unintelligible  arbitrariness.  In 
God's  world  the  teachings  of  history  and 
the  indications  of  experience  are  as  truly 
a  revelation  as  any  series  of  texts  or  any 
voice  from  the  skies. 

This  is  the  true  naturalism  of  Biblical 
study.  It  never  gives  any  final  explana- 
tion, but  it  seeks  to  trace  the  continuity 
of  law  and  rational  connection  through 
the  revealing  work.  Its  nature  and  value 
may  be  seen  from  the  following  illustra- 
tion :  It  is  common  to  say  that  a  man  is 
explained  by  his  time  and  environment. 
For  instance,  Newton  would  have  been 
impossible  among  the  Bushmen.  His 
work  demanded  the  existence  of  civili- 
zation and  the  work  of  previous  mathe- 


GOD   AND   THE  BIBLE        91 

maticians.  This  is  undoubted,  and  in 
this  sense  Newton  is  explained  by  his 
time  and  environment.  But  it  would  be 
highly  superficial  to  rest  in  this.  The 
time  and  environment  were  the  same  for 
every  mathematician  in  England ;  but 
they  were  ineffective  until  combined  with 
the  special  genius  of  Newton ;  and  this 
is  something  which  time  and  environ- 
ment never  account  for.  Hence,  in  study- 
ing a  man's  life,  we  certainly  need  to 
consider  his  antecedents  and  surround- 
ings ;  but  the  man  himself  is  a  factor 
apart,  conditioned  by  these  things,  but 
not  to  be  confounded  with  them  or  de- 
duced from  them.  In  the  same  way  the 
naturalistic  study  of  revelation  can  show 
important  preparations,  historical  con- 
tinuities, psychological  uniformities,  ra- 
tional harmonies,  but  we  reach  nothing 
final  until  we  come  to  the  immanent, 
self-revealing  God. 

The  method  of  false  supernaturalism, 
on  the  other  hand,  which  fears  all  rational 


92    THE  IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

study  of  the  subject,  has  been  well  illus- 
trated as  follows:  The  Sunday-school 
lesson  is  on  Peter's  vision  as  he  was 
sleeping  on  the  housetop.  An  inquir- 
ing child,  familiar  only  with  our  peaked 
roofs,  asks  how  Peter  could  sleep  on  the 
housetop  without  rolling  off.  One  teacher 
sharply  rebukes  him  for  presuming  to 
doubt  the  Word  of  God.  Another  teacher 
admits  the  propriety  of  the  question,  but 
reminds  the  child  that  there  is  no  diffi- 
culty, as  *^  with  God  all  things  are  pos- 
sible." Both  teachers  resent  the  sugges- 
tion that  Eastern  houses  have  flat  roofs 
as  "  bald  naturalism  "  and  "  an  abyss  of 
Satan,"  due  to  a  desire  to  eliminate  mir- 
acles from  the  Word  of  God,  and  smack- 
ing strongly  of  latent  infidelity. 

This  well  illustrates  the  shortcoming 
of  abstract  supernaturalism  in  its  treat- 
ment of  the  Bible,  and  the  complete  pa- 
ralysis of  thought  which  results  from  it. 
It  is  indeed  true  that  with  God  all  things 
are  possible,  but  it  is  also  true  that  in 


GOD   AND  THE  BIBLE        93 

God's  world  all  things  are  not  equally- 
probable.  There  is  a  certain  divine  style 
which  we  look  for  in  God's  work.  There 
are  ways  of  doing  things  which  we  ex- 
pect to  find  in  anything  coming  from 
him.  Pure,  unmediated  supernaturalism 
leads  to  such  defenses  of  the  faith  as  the 
routing  of  the  geologists  by  the  consid- 
eration that  God  could  make  imitation 
fishbones  and  put  them  in  the  rocks  if  he 
wished,  or  a  whale  four  miles  long  if  it 
were  his  pleasure.  In  the  same  way  we 
might  argue  for  all  the  miracles  of  the 
Gospel  of  the  Infancy.  The  child  Jesus 
made  clay  birds  and  clapped  his  hands 
over  them,  and  they  lived  and  flew  away. 
On  another  occasion  Joseph  cut  some 
lumber  too  short,  and  the  child  stretched 
it  by  a  miracle.  Why  not?  With  God 
all  things  are  possible.  Against  such 
vagaries  a  true  naturalism  is  needed  to 
defend  us ;  or  perhaps  a  small  amount 
of  good  sense  would  suffice. 

As  against  false  naturalism  the  wise 


94    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

believer  insists  that  the  fact  of  natural 
methods  in  God's  self-revealing  work 
in  no  way  dispenses  with  the  fact  of  the 
divine  purpose  and  presence.  As  against 
false  supernaturalism  he  insists  that  God 
may  be  as  present  in  his  orderly  methods 
and  the  steadfast  ordinances  of  the  world 
as  in  any  or  all  miracles  whatsoever. 
And  in  any  case,  the  important  thing  is 
not  to  find  miracles,  but  to  find  God  and 
learn  his  will  and  do  it. 

If  we  were  devising  a  method  of  reve- 
lation which  should  be  perfectly  simple, 
and  which  could  be  polemically  used, 
especially  in  the  construction  of  "  evi- 
dences," we  should  almost  certainly  de- 
cide upon  a  scheme  of  definitely  dictated 
and  infallible  texts,  with  a  proper  bolster- 
ing of  miracles  and  prophecies  for  proofs. 
This  was  long  the  scheme  of  traditional 
orthodoxy,  but  it  has  withered  away.  It 
was  purely  academic  and  ad  hoc  in  its 
construction,  and  few  persons  now  regret 


GOD   AND   THE  BIBLE        95 

its  passing.  God's  method  in  revelation, 
as  in  nature,  proves  to  be  not  so  simple 
and  compendious  as  we  had  thought. 
But  when  we  remember  that  God  is  in 
all  history  and  has  never  left  himself 
without  a  witness,  and  when  we  further 
remember  that  the  divine  method  is  one 
of  growth  and  slow  development  out  of 
the  natural  into  the  spiritual,  we  are  not 
surprised  to  find  him  using  the  legends 
and  picture-stories  and  naive  interpreta- 
tions of  early  men  as  vehicles  for  com- 
municating to  them  deeper  and  higher 
conceptions  of  himself.  In  themselves 
these  things  were  imperfect  and  crude 
enough,  but  as  vehicles  of  revelation  they 
nevertheless  revealed.  Why  should  not 
God  begin  with  men  where  they  are,  in- 
tellectually and  morally,  and  use  even 
their  myths  and  imaginings  to  lift  them 
to  higher  insight?  No  one  who  has  not 
first  banished  God  from  both  history  and 
the  world  need  be  offended  by  such  a 
method,  if  investigation  should  show  it 


96   THE  IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

to  have  been  the  fact.  And  the  justifica- 
tion of  the  method  is  found  in  the  fact 
that  in  this  way  God  has  made  a  reve- 
lation of  himself,  a  blessed  and  grow- 
ing insight  into  what  he  is  and  what 
he  means,  which  is  our  great  and  chief 
source  of  hope  and  inspiration,  and  the 
corner-stone  of  our  civilization.  The  con- 
tents of  revelation  and  the  method  of 
revelation  are  questions  quite  distinct. 
All  that  faith  is  really  concerned  with  is 
the  divine  contents  ;  it  is  willing  to  find 
the  method  whatever  investigation  may 
show  it  to  have  been. 

Questions  of  this  kind  admit,  of  course, 
of  no  demonstrative  solution.  Crude  dog- 
matists indeed  fancy  that  argument  can 
be  found  which  will  reduce  all  doubters 
to  silence  and  force  the  conclusion  upon 
the  most  unwilling  mind ;  but  this  only 
shows  how  exhaustive  and  exhausting 
their  ignorance  is.  The  conflict  lies  back 
of  logic.  It  is  a  conflict  of  world-views, 
and  of  dispositions  back  of  world-views. 


GOD   AND   THE   BIBLE        97 

These  have  to  fight  it  out  in  the  field  of 
life  and  history  in  the  supreme  struggle 
for  existence.  And  when  we  take  the 
revelation  as  a  whole,  viewing  it  not  only 
in  its  crude  beginning,  but  also  in  its 
growing  history  and  divine  outcome,  the 
religious  mind  will  have  no  difficulty  in 
believing  that  God  spake  in  past  times 
unto  the  fathers  by  the  prophets  in  divers 
portions  and  in  divers  manners,  and  at 
the  end  of  those  times  spake  unto  us  by 
his  Son.  And  the  irreligious  mind  will 
go  its  own  way  with,  to  say  the  least,  no 
better  logic,  and  without  any  inspiration 
for  life.  History  shows  pretty  clearly  how 
the  survival  of  the  fittest  will  decide  be- 
tween them. 

This  matter  of  the  Bible  has  been  so 
generally  confused  in  popular  thought  by 
the  failure  to  distinguish  between  revela- 
tion and  its  method  that  some  further 
discussion  seems  desirable.  In  particular 
the  conservative  has  decided  what  reve- 


98    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

lation  must  be,  and  how  it  must  be  made, 
and  any  departure  from  his  view  is  held 
to  make  the  Word  of  God  of  none  effect. 
With  this  prejudice  in  mind,  he  rarely 
makes  an  inductive  study  of  what  reve- 
lation really  is,  or  how  it  has  been  made. 
As  he  knows  what  must  be,  this  is  quite 
unnecessary.  He  infers  the  truth  of  the 
Bible  from  its  inspiration,  instead  of 
inferring  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible 
from  the  greatness  of  its  contents.  And 
the  meaning  of  inspiration  is  inferred 
from  apriori  reflection,  rather  than  from 
a  study  of  its  products.  The  method 
is  essentially  apriori  and  rationalistic. 
"  Logical  consequences  "  are  invoked  to 
cast  discredit  and  opprobrium  on  any- 
thing the  conservative  may  dislike.  In- 
errancy must  be  affirmed,  or  we  are  all 
at  sea.  To  admit  error  in  the  Scriptures 
must  destroy  all  reverence  for  the  super- 
natural authority  of  the  Bible.  The  theo- 
logians who  make  such  an  admission 
may  be  able  to  split  the  hair  with  suffi- 


GOD  AND  THE  BIBLE        99 

cient  dexterity  to  convince  themselves  of 
their  own  expertness,  but  they  never  can 
convince  the  common  people  of  good 
sense  that  the  Bible  can  be  of  God  and 
yet  have  man's  imperfections.  If  it  is  not 
wholly  supernatural  and  absolute  truth 
from  God,  men  ask  where  is  the  basis 
for  the  religious  faith  and  theology  of 
Christianity ;  for  such  knowledge  cannot 
possibly  come  except  by  revelation  and 
inspiration  from  God.  It  must  be  a  "  piece 
of  information  supernaturally  communi- 
cated "  and  verified. 

So  the  conservative  reasons.  If  the 
Bible  is  not  technically  infallible,  it  is 
worthless  as  a  religious  guide.  If  the  ass 
and  the  serpent  did  not  speak,  or  the  axe 
did  not  swim,  we  may  not  believe  in 
Jesus  Christ  as  the  light  of  the  world,  ^/j 
nor  accept  his  revelation  of  the  Father. 

But  the  short  and  easy  method  of  the 
verbalist  and  the  peremptory  decisions 
of  the  logical  -  consequence  maker  no 
longer  carry  conviction,  but  rather  serve 


100    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

only  as  the  occasion  of  a  reminiscent  and 
compassionate  smile.  The  truth  is,  that 
this  conservative  doctrine  of  Scripture, 
so  far  from  being  a  source  of  power,  is  a 
prolific  source  of  doubt  and  difBculty. 
Unwittingly,  of  course,  but  nevertheless 
in  effect,  the  conservative  of  this  type  is 
one  of  the  chief  enemies  of  the  faith.  If  his 
view  were  simply  unscholarly,  we  might 
endure  it  by  thinking  of  something  else  ; 
but  it  is  the  chief  hindrance  to  faith  with 
well-meaning  men,  and  the  great  point 
of  attack  by  opponents  of  Christianity. 
Accordingly  we  find  in  our  schools  that 
the  persons  most  likely  to  fall  into  infidel- 
ity are  those  who  have  been  brought  up 
in  a  mechanical  conservatism,  and  have 
been  allowed  to  know  only  what  was 
supposed  to  be  safe.  And  as  for  oppo- 
nents of  Christianity,  I  have  read  a  deal  of 
anti-Christian  literature  in  the  last  thirty 
years,  and,  excepting  that  of  the  atheis- 
tic and  materialistic  type,  practically  all 
of  it  consists  of  objections  springing,  not 


GOD  AND   THE  BIBLE      loi 

out  of  the  essential  truths  of  Christianity, 
but  out  of  gratuitous  difficulties  arising" 
from  the  traditional  doctrine  of  Scripture. 
No  greater  external  aid  to  faith  could  be 
found  than  the  modification  of  this  doc- 
trine which  the  facts  are  forcing  upon  us. 
Again,  conservatism  of  this  type  should 
be  reminded  of  its  own  history.  It  should 
recall  its  exploits  and  adventures  with 
astronomy  and  geology  and  biology.  It 
should  remember  that  scarcely  a  step 
of  progress  has  been  made  which  has 
not  been  resisted  by  some  one  on  the 
ground  that  it  would  overthrow  faith  in 
the  Bible.  The  claims  of  this  sort  make  a 
most  grotesque  collection,  ranging  all  the 
way  from  attacks  on  astronomy  and  geo- 
logy and  geography  and  political  eco- 
nomy to  demurrers  against  anaesthetics, 
lightning-rods,  fanning-mills,  and  women 
speaking  in  religious  meetings.  This 
humiliating  history  would  be  a  profitable 
subject  of  reflection  for  any  one  who  is 
inclined  to  resist  any  departure  from  his 


w^ 


102    THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

conception  on  the  ground  that  it  would 
make  the  Word  of  God  of  none  effect 
The  most  pronounced  conservative  now 
holds  many  things  which  were  once  re- 
jected as  heresy ;  but  his  mental  attitude 
is  fixed.  He  is  ready  to  build  the  tombs 
of  dead  prophets,  but  living  ones  must 
be  stoned. 

The  conservative  should  also  remem- 
ber that  questions  of  fact  can  never  be 
settled,  so  as  to  stay  settled,  by  authority, 
but  only  by  the  appropriate  methods  of 
investigation  and  evidence.  Bulls  against 
comets  are  futile.  The  good  church  fa- 
ther who  refused  to  look  through  Gali^ 
leo's  telescope,  lest  he  should  see  Jupiter's 
moons,  has  had  many  imitators,  but  he 
was  not  a  model  investigator.  And  even 
after  the  motion  of  the  earth  had  been 
renounced  and  cursed,  the  earth  kept 
on  moving  as  before.  Conservatism  has 
inflicted  not  a  litde  humiliation  and 
disgrace  upon  religion  at  this  point. 
As  a  rule,  it  has  at  first  denied  or  de- 


GOD   AND   THE   BIBLE       103 

nounced  the  facts,  and  has  shown  that 
they  could  not  be  facts  as  they  would 
make  the  Word  of  God  of  none  effect, 
or,  still  worse,  were  contrary  to  the  Con- 
fession of  Faith  or  the  "  Consensus  of 
the  Church."  After  a  while  it  has  admit- 
ted that  they  were  facts,  indeed,  but  of  no 
importance  ;  and  finally  it  has  forgotten 
that  it  ever  denied  that  they  were  facts. 
Come  and  let  us  reason  together  and  look 
at  the  facts  together,  must  be  the  schol- 
ar's motto ;  and  he  must  always  aim 
at  adjusting  his  thoughts  to  the  facts, 
and  never  at  adjusting  the  facts  to  his 
thoughts.  For  facts  still  remain  stubborn 
things,  and  sooner  or  later  will  have  way, 
—  Popes,  Bishops,  Councils,  General  As- 
semblies, and  General  Conferences  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding. 

But  now  some  good  conservative  will 
ask  if  we  are  not  dissolving  everything 
away.  Is  anything  left  after  such  reason- 
ing ?  This  question  roots  in  the  failure  to 


I04    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

distinguish  between  the  essential  truths 
of  revelation  and  the  conception  respect- 
ing the  mode  and  method  of  the  reve- 
lation. The  truths  stand  fast;  but  the 
conception  concerning  the  mode  and 
method  varies.  We  have  substituted  for 
immediate  dictation  the  conception  of  a 
historical  and  gradual  unfolding  in  ac- 
cordance with  God's  general  laws  in  life 
and  history  and  humanity,  but  we  believe 
no  less  in  the  revelation  ;  indeed,  it  seems 
to  us  diviner  than  ever,  now  that  it  has 
become  more  human  ;  and  more  super- 
natural than  ever,  now  that  we  trace 
God's  universal  natural  methods  in  it. 

And  this  leads  to  the  reflection  that  all 
critics,  advanced  and  conservative  alike, 
should  fix  their  attention  on  the  central 
ideas  of  revelation  and  discern  the  sub- 
ordinate and  relatively  unimportant  na- 
ture of  their  inquiries.  Christian  thought 
does  not  centre  around  the  authorship 
of  the  Pentateuch  or  the  unity  of  Isaiah, 
the  inerrancy  of  the  Biblical  record  or 


GOD   AND   THE   BIBLE       105 

the  historicity  of  Daniel.  It  centres  in  the 
thought  of  God  the  Father  Almighty,  of 
Jesus  Christ  his  Son  and  our  Lord,  of  the 
sanctifying,  inspiring,  life-giving  Spirit, 
and  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  This  is  the 
gist  and  root  of  the  whole  matter ;  and 
from  this  our  thought  should  go  out  and 
to  it  our  thought  should  ever  return  ;  for 
this  is  what  gives  meaning  and  value 
to  Bible  history  and  Bible  study.  The 
supreme  thing  is  not  to  affirm  or  deny 
higher  criticism,  not  to  affirm  or  deny  the 
Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  not 
to  affirm  or  deny  the  historicity  of  Dan- 
iel, but  to  preach  the  Gospel  and  bring 
in  the  kingdom  of  God.  This  only  is  of 
faith  concerning  the  Scriptures,  that  God 
has  revealed  himself  through  them  and 
the  history  which  they  record  as  a  God 
of  righteousness  and  grace.  And  this 
only  is  of  faith  respecting  Christianity, 
that  it  is  God's  great  and  supreme  reve- 
lation of  what  he  is  and  what  he  means 
for  men.  To   depart  from  this  faith   is 


io6    THE   IMMANENCE  OF   GOD 

heresy.  To  live  and  work  in  this  faith 
is  to  be  a  child  of  the  kingdom.  Given 
these  central  truths  and  the  accordant 
life,  we  may  be  sure  that  all  other  mat- 
ters will  adjust  themselves  in  time.  If  the 
radical  be  over-radical,  life  and  reflection 
will  restrain  him.  If  the  conservative 
be  unduly  timid,  experience  and  further 
study  will  encourage  him.  And  on  the 
plane  of  a  common  devotion  to  this 
kingdom  and  Lord,  all  Christians  should 
meet.  They  would  then  find  their  dif- 
ferences fading  away  entirely,  or  at  least 
sinking  into  relative  insignificance  ;  and 
they  would  keep  the  unity  of  the  spirit 
in  the  bonds  of  peace.  Moreover,  out  of 
this  method  of  life  will  come  a  conviction 
of  the  truth  which  can  be  reached  in  no 
other  way,  and  which  will  dissolve  away 
all  the  formal  doubts  which  swarm  about 
the  speculative  and  deductive  treatment 
of  the  subject.  And  this  is  the  only 
method  by  which  living  conviction  can 
be  attained.   Abstract  reflection  on  mira- 


GOD   AND   THE   BIBLE       107 

cles  and  prophecies,  after  the  manner 
of  the  traditional  apologists,  never  con- 
vinced anybody,  and  never  will,  unless 
his  mind  be  made  up  in  advance. 

And  this  recurrence  to  the  central 
truths  of  revelation  and  their  realization 
in  life  contains  the  solution  of  another 
difficulty  which  the  conservative  often 
feels,  and  which  is  indeed  his  chief  theo- 
retical difficulty  and  the  foundation  of  his 
polemics  and  the  source  of  the  fearsome 
"  logical  consequences  '*  which  infest  his 
imagination.  What  security,  he  asks, 
have  we,  if  we  do  not  maintain  the  strict 
inerrancy  of  the  Scriptures  ?  This  diffi- 
culty is  a  real  one  with  many,  and  it 
continually  reappears  in  conservative 
polemics.  It  is  only  an  echo,  however, 
of  an  apriori  rationalism  which  has  van- 
ished from  the  field  of  philosophy  and 
maintains  a  precarious  existence  among 
conservative  Biblical  critics.  More  spe- 
cifically, the  conservative  here  is  puzzling 
over  the  problem  of  certainty  and  ulti- 


io8    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

mate  authority,  which  he  evidently  thinks 
is  a  matter  of  logic  and  demonstration. 

But  this  problem  is  purely  academic 
and  barren,  and  is  several  generations 
out  of  date.  The  question  has  long  been 
shelved  as  idle  and  futile.  Philosophy,  to 
which  the  problem  belongs,  long  since 
made  the  discovery  that  real  and  concrete 
certainty  is  always  a  matter  of  practical 
experience  and  not  of  speculation.  Ab- 
stract discussion  and  consequence-mak- 
ing can  go  on  forever  ;  but  contact  withv^ 
reality  gives  the  decision.  For  instance, 
the  trustworthiness  of  the  senses  could 
be  debated  world  without  end;  and  if 
we  remained  in  the  closet,  we  should 
conclude  that  the  senses  could  never  be 
trusted,  because  we  can  lay  down  no  cer- 
tain standard.  But  the  matter  settles  itself 
when  we  come  out  of  the  closet  and  use 
our  senses.  Then  we  learn  that  though 
theoretically  their  authority  is  open  to 
question,  practically  we  can  depend  upon 
them. 


GOD  AND  THE   BIBLE      109 

Philosophy  has  made  the  further  dis- 
covery that  concrete  certainty  in  general 
has  a  complex  root  in  life  as  a  whole. 
There  is  no  simple  and  single  objective 
standard,  labeled  certainty,  which  may 
be  mechanically  applied  for  the  testing 
of  truth.  The  living  mind  itself,  with  its 
interest  and  tendencies  and  furniture  of 
experience,  is  the  only  standard  ;  and  this 
mind,  in  immediate  contact  with  reality, 
attains  to  certainty  about  many  things, 
and  ignores  the  skeptical  challenge  as 
an  antiquated  verbal  contention. 

The  application  to  the  Scriptures  is 
obvious.  Their  value  and  authority  can 
be  determined  only  in  the  concrete  life 
and  experience  of  the  church.  Syllogiz- 
ing and  fearsome  logical  consequences 
are  as  empty  here  as  they  are  in  the 
problem  of  knowledge  in  general.  They 
make  a  show  of  rigor  and  vigor,  but  are 
only  sound  and  fury,  signifying  nothing. 

And  in  addition  to  being  concrete,  the 
problem   is   also   complex.    Those   who 


1/ 


no    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

would  find  the  source  of  certainty  and 
the  seat  of  authority  in  the  Scriptures 
alone,  or  the  church  alone,  or  reason  and 
conscience  alone,  rather  than  in  the  com- 
plex and  indivisible  co-working  of  all 
these  factors,  should  be  reminded  of  the 
history  of  religious  thought.  The  stifT- 
est  doctrine  of  Scripture  inerrancy  has 
not  prevented  warring  interpretations ; 
and  those  who  would  place  the  seat  of 
authority  in  reason  and  conscience  are 
forced  to  admit  that  outside  illumination 
may  do  much  for  both.  In  some  sense 
the  religion  of  the  spirit  is  a  very  impor- 
tant fact,  but  when  it  sets  up  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  religion  of  a  book,  the  light 
that  is  in  it  is  apt  to  turn  to  darkness. 
Individual  dark  lanterns  never  contribute 
much  to  the  light  of  the  world.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  book  and  church  have 
had  to  yield  to  the  growing  spiritual 
insight  of  the  religious  community.  The 
stoutest  verbalist  and  ecclesiastic  to-day 
would  not  tolerate  things  on  which  once 


GOD  AND   THE   BIBLE      in 

they  vehemently  insisted,  but  which  have 
been  outgrown,  although  the  texts  once 
relied  on  still  exist.  All  interpretations 
of  words  must  be  functions  of  the  in- 
terpreters as  well  as  of  dictionaries 
and  grammars.  Even  papal  infallibility, 
which  would  seem  to  be  a  simple  doc- 
trine, according  to  a  good  Catholic  lawyer 
means  only  that  the  Pope  is  the  court  of 
last  resort,  something  like  the  doctrine 
that  the  king  can  do  no  wrong.  Plainly, 
no  mechanical  religious  standards  can 
save  us  from  falling  back  on  the  com- 
plex life  of  the  religious  community  as 
the  real  interpreter  and  judge. 

Again,  the  Bible  does  not  exist  as  a 
storehouse  of  arguments  for  confound- 
ing the  unspiritual  and  compelling  the 
assent  of  unwilling  minds.  Had  this  been 
its  purpose,  it  could  have  been  greatly 
improved.  But  it  is  rather  a  book  of 
religion,  a  revelation  of  God.  And  when 
it  is  used  in  the  honest  desire  and  pur- 
pose to  know  God's  will,  it  will  always 


112    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

vindicate  its  supreme  religious  signifi- 
cance in  spite  of  the  closet  philosopher, 
the  verbal  quibbler,  the  higher  critic,  and 
the  dealer  in  logical  consequences.  In 
this  field  experience  is  the  only  source  of 
certainty  and  test  of  truth.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  the  caviler  and  logical-conse- 
quence man  can  pick  flaws  ;  and  here,  as 
elsewhere,  good  sense  ignores  him.  The 
appeal  must  always  be  to  life  and  expe- 
rience, and  not  to  abstract  theorizing. 
We  need  no  infallible  authority,  whether 
of  book  or  church ;  and  in  any  case  we 
have  no  such  authority.  What  we  need, 
and  what  we  have,  is  a  truth  that  carries 
practical  conviction  with  it.  This  convic- 
tion is  weakened  only  when  we  begin  to 
look  for  some  external  authority  which 
shall  be  subject  to  no  objection.  It  is 
well  known  that  the  argument  for  the  in- 
fallibility of  any  alleged  authority  always 
has  to  work  with  evidence  so  fallible  that 
the  conclusion  must  ever  remain  logically 
precarious.   There  is  always  a  link  in  the 


GOD   AND    THE   BIBLE     113 

reasoning,  or  a  factor  in  our  presupposi- 
tions, which  logically  opens  a  wide  door 
to  fallibility.  Such  argument  is  of  use 
only  for  those  who  have  already  made 
up  their  minds,  or  who  wish  to  intimi- 
date others.  Logically  it  is  always  open 
to  fatal  objection ;  and  psychologically 
it  overlooks  the  actual  process  of  the 
mind  in  attaining  living  belief.  Except 
to  writers  of  old-fashioned  apologetics 
and  dealers  in  proof-texts,  it  is  not  im- 
portant that  the  Bible  should  be  verbally 
inspired  and  technically  infallible ;  but  it 
is  important  that  men  should  find  God 
in  it  and  through  it.  And  that  God  can 
thus  be  found,  even  without  profound 
learning  and  critical  apparatus,  is  the 
concurrent  testimony  of  the  saints  of  all 
ages.  There  is  a  divine  immanence  in 
the  Word  as  well  as  in  the  Work,  which 
makes  it 

"The  fountain  light  of  all  our  day, 
A  master  light  of  all  our  seeing." 

Not  abstract  miracles  and  prophecies,  but 


114   THE  IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

this  abiding,  world-historical  significance 
of  the  Bible  in  the  religious  life  of  human- 
ity is  its  great  evidential  support,  and  all 
that  gives  it  any  claim  upon  our  faith. 

A  story  told  by  Sabatier  about  an  old 
monk  named  Serapion  illustrates  the 
distinction  between  a  doctrine  and  the 
conception  of  the  doctrine,  and  the  im- 
portance of  bearing  it  in  mind. 

Far  back  in  the  early  times,  the  story 
runs,  Serapion,  a  most  worthy  monk,  fell 
into  the  error  of  the  Anthropomorphists. 
The  Bible  seemed  to  him  full  of  anthro- 
pomorphic expressions,  and  he  took  them 
literally ;  and  one  day  Paphnutius,  a 
priest,  and  Photinus,  a  deacon,  called  on 
him,  hoping  to  recover  him  from  his 
delusion.  They  pointed  out  that  God  is 
a  spirit,  and  as  such  can  have  no  form 
or  organs.  Finally,  partly  by  their  argu- 
ments and  partly  by  their  authority,  they 
persuaded  Serapion  to  renounce  his  error. 
Then  Paphnutius  and  Photinus  pro- 
ceeded to  give  thanks  to  God  for  hav- 


GOD   AND  THE   BIBLE      115 

ing  restored  the  holy  man  to  the  true 
faith.  But  in  the  midst  of  their  thanks- 
giving Serapion  threw  himself  on  the 
ground  weeping  and  wailing  because 
they  had  taken  away  his  God  and  left 
him  no  one  to  pray  to. 

Which  thing  is  an  allegory.  Sera- 
pion could  not  distinguish  between  the 
doctrine  and  his  own  crude  conception ; 
and  when  the  latter  was  set  aside,  he 
thought  the  doctrine  itself  gone.  There 
is  a  certain  pathos  in  such  cases,  ancient 
or  modem,  yet  not  without  a  touch  of 
the  ludicrous.  Childish  things  are  not 
attractive  when  they  outlast  childhood. 
Whatever  sympathy  we  may  feel  for 
Serapion,  we  must  not  allow  him  to  fix 
our  doctrine  of  Scripture,  or  anything 
else. 


IV 

GOD   AND   RELIGION 

Thus  far  we  have  considered  the  bear- 
ing of  the  divine  immanence  upon  our 
thought  of  nature,  history,  and  the  Bible. 
We  have  seen  that  it  discharges  the  false 
or  "  bald  "  naturalism  of  popular  thought, 
and  dispels  the  fears  of  naturalism  which 
haunt  so  much  religious  discussion.  In- 
stead of  a  self-sufBcient  mechanical  na- 
ture, it  gives  us  a  supernatural  natural, 
that  is,  a  natural  which  forever  depends 
on  the  divine  will  and  purpose,  and  a 
natural  supernatural,  that  is,  a  divine 
causality  which  proceeds  according  to 
orderly  methods  in  the  realization  of  its 
aims.  We  have  now  to  consider  the  sig- 
nificance of  this  doctrine  for  the  religious 
life. 

And  here,  too,  popular  thought  has 
been  confused  greatly  by  the  traditional 


GOD  AND   RELIGION        117 

misconception  of  the  natural.  As  God 
was  supposed  to  be  in  nature  and  his- 
tory only,  or  at  least  mainly,  in  the  form 
of  signs  and  wonders,  so  he  was  sup- 
posed to  be  in  the  soul  only,  or  at  least 
mainly,  in  the  form  of  manifestations  of  a 
somewhat  anarchic  and  prodigy- working 
type.  And  as  the  familiar  laws  of  nature 
were  supposed  to  represent  no  divine  pur- 
pose, but  only  a  mere  determination  of  a 
blind  and  unpurposed  mechanism,  so  the 
familiar  laws  of  life  and  mind,  and  all  the 
normal  workings  of  human  nature,  were 
supposed  to  be  unrelated  to  any  divine 
purpose,  and  were  dismissed  as  **  merely 
natural."  Of  course,  in  both  cases,  by  the 
logic  of  the  situation  it  was  necessary  to 
look  for  the  divine  in  the  extraordinary 
and  anomalous.  And  the  dealers  in  such 
things  verily  thought  that  they  were 
defending  religion,  and  never  suspected 
that  they  were  really  the  victims  of  a 
shallow  philosophy.  The  uproar  over 
Dr.  Bushnell's  "Christian  Nurture"  fifty 


ii8    THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

years  ago  is  a  good  illustration.  Many 
ark-savers  experienced  the  severest 
alarms  at  what  seemed  to  them  an  ig- 
noring of  the  supernatural. 

Now  here  again  the  divine  immanence 
helps  us.  We  are  in  our  Father's  house 
and  Father's  hands  ;  and  though  we  may 
not  be  able  always  to  trace  his  presence 
or  interpret  every  feature  of  his  work, 
yet  his  will  is  being  done.  And  this  is 
really  what  faith  seeks  for  in  this  matter. 
The  soul  longs  to  find  God,  to  believe 
that  it  has  not  fallen  into  life  headlong, 
to  feel  that  it  is  in  the  hands  of  him  that 
made  it,  and  that  he  is  ever  near.  The 
religious  soul  fears  naturalism  because 
nature  seems  to  be  a  barrier  between 
God  and  itself,  and  to  thrust  him  into  a 
past  so  distant  as  to  make  him  doubtful 
and  to  put  him  beyond  any  real,  living, 
present  interest  in  us.  And  a  naturalism 
of  that  sort  is  to  be  feared,  as  in  its  pre- 
sence high  faith  is  sure  to  wither,  or  cry 
out  in  mortal  anguish.   It  is  not  nature 


GOD   AND   RELIGION        119 

>r  law  that  the  soul  fears,  but  nature  or 
jaw  without  God  in  it.  It  is  not  the  bur- 
dens and  distresses  of  life  that  oppress 
and  depress  us,  but  burdens  and  dis- 
tresses that  spring  from  nothing  and  lead 
to  nothing.  If  they  are  appointed  by  our 
Father  for  our  discipline  and  develop- 
ment, we  can  bear  them  with  good  cour- 
age and  unrepining  hearts ;  we  break 
down  only  when  we  view  them  as  the 
blind  raging  of  a  storm.  Now  from  this 
distress  the  belief  in  the  divine  imma- 
nence saves  us.  He  is  in  the  darkness  as 
well  as  in  the  light,  in  failure  and  sorrow 
as  well  as  in  success  and  joy,  in  death  as 
well  as  in  life.  He  is  the  God  of  all  things, 
and  is  God  over  all  things,  and  is  blessed 
forevermore.  This  view,  we  repeat,  is 
what  religious  thought  really  desires  to 
reach  in  its  opposition  to  naturalism  and 
its  emphasis  on  the  supernatural.  Its 
real  aim  is  to  find  God,  not  prodigies  ; 
but  it  errs  and  strays  from  the  way  be- 
cause of  the   crude   philosophy   which 


120    THE   IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

banishes  God  from  the  natural  and  finds 
him  only  in  the  strange,  the  anomalous, 
the  chaotic.  And  this  illiteracy  culmi- 
nates in  the  fancy  that  this  is  the  only 
religious  view. 

But  after  we  had  driven  off  false  natu- 
ralism from  the  philosophy  of  nature  and 
history,  we  found  a  place  for  a  true  nat- 
uralism. Similarly  here,  after  we  have 
driven  off  false  naturalism  from  the  spirit- 
ual life,  we  find  a  place  for  a  true  natural- 
ism. In  other  words,  the  conviction  that 
we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being  in 
God  does  not  decide  the  form  and  mode 
of  God's  work  in  us  ;  and  to  learn  this, 
we  must  fall  back  on  experience. 

The  great  error  of  religious  thought  in 
this  matter  is  the  same  as  its  error  at  the 
corresponding  point  in  its  thought  of  God 
in  nature.  It  has  sought  to  walk  by  sight 
rather  than  by  thought  and  faith.  Hence  / 
the  conception  has  been  almost  exclu-  ^ 
sively  thaumaturgic.   A  changed  life,  a 


GOD  AND   RELIGION        121 

clean  heart,  a  strengthened  will,  a  deeper 
moral  insight,  and  a  purer  devotion  would 
be  very  poor  marks  of  a  divine  indwell- 
ing in  comparison  with  some  psycho- 
logical exaltation  which,  by  its  strange- 
ness or  excess,  might  impress  persons 
of  wonder-loving  mental  habit.  Hence, 
again,  there  has  been  a  very  general 
tendency  in  the  history  of  the  church  to 
look  upon  emotional  ebulliencies,  anar- 
chic raptures,  anomalous  and  spectacular 
experiences,  as  the  truly  classical  mani- 
festations of  religion,  while  the  inter- 
action of  religious  feeling,  intellect,  and 
moral  will  has  been  viewed  as  a  falling 
away  from  the  highest  and  only  classical 
form.  To  guard  against  this  error,  we 
must  analyze  our  problem  somewhat  at 
length. 

And  first  of  all  we  must  bear  in  mind 
that  it  is  not  a  question  of  the  reality 
and  necessity  of  God's  work  in  the  soul 
in  order  that  we  may  attain  unto  the  life 
of  the  spirit.   Upon  occasion  we  should 


122    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

steadfastly  deny  any  Pelagian  self-suffi- 
ciency of  the  human  will,  and  that  for 
both  philosophical  and  religious  reasons. 
It  is  simply  a  question  respecting  the 
form  of  this  divine  co-working.  Is  it 
natural  or  supernatural  ? 

This  question  at  once  reveals  the  fact 
that  these  terms  have  peculiar  meanings 
in  religious  speech.  Natural  is  often  used 
to  mean  the  sensuous  in  distinction  from 
the  spiritual,  as  in  the  text,  "  That  was  not 
first  which  is  spiritual,  but  that  which  is 
natural."  Sometimes  it  means  that  which 
is  possible  to  man's  unaided  powers  ; 
and  the  affirmation  of  a  supernatural 
means  a  power  from  above  which  rein- 
forces our  weakness.  And  sometimes 
natural  means  that  in  which  an  order  of 
law  can  be  observed  and  traced.  It  is  in 
this  last  sense  that  we  use  it  here.  We 
are  far  enough  from  affirming  that  man 
is  sufficient  unto  himself  in  the  spiritual 
life.  Such  a  view  is  a  mark  of  gross  phi- 
losophic and  religious  illiteracy.     The 


GOD  AND  RELIGION        123 

professional  defender  of  the  faith  seldom 
discriminates  these  widely  differing  mean- 
ings, and  thus  begins,  continues,  and  ends 
in  confusion. 

God's  work  in  nature  and  history,  we 
have  seen,  is  not  against  law,  but  through 
law.  The  thaumaturgic  element,  in  any 
case,  is  a  vanishing  factor  in  comparison. 
A  moment's  reflection  convinces  us  that 
the  same  must  be  true  of  God's  work  in 
the  soul.  It  is  not  against  the  laws  of 
mind,  but  through  them,  that  God  real- 
izes his  purposes  in  us.  This  is  an  abso- 
lute condition  of  our  mental  and  moral 
sanity.  If  we  are  to  lead  a  moral  and 
rational  life  of  any  sort,  there  must  be  an 
order  of  life  on  which  we  can  depend. 
If  religion  is  not  to  be  an  excuse  for  indo- 
lence, we  must  work  out  our  own  salva- 
tion. It  is  indeed  God  who  worketh  in 
us,  but  he  works  according  to  law,  and 
in  such  a  way  as  to  call  for  all  our  effort. 
He  gives  us  spiritual  bread  as  he  gives 
us  daily  bread.   In  the  latter  case  the 


124    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

bread  supply  does  not  come  by  any 
celestial  express,  but  through  the  spring- 
ing corn  and  the  ripening  harvest ;  yet 
it  is  from  God  after  all.  In  like  manner 
spiritual  blessing  is  not  conferred  in  any 
scenic  and  unmediated  fashion,  but  by 
power  moving  along  the  lines  of  normal 
life,  and  manifesting  itself  in  its  products 
rather  than  its  abnormal  methods.  And 
in  the  case  of  both  physical  and  spiritual 
bread,  we  have  to  work  for  it 

The  religious  life  is  the  last  realm  to 
be  brought  under  the  notion  of  law. 
Law  is  now  a  matter  of  course  in  physics, 
astronomy,  meteorology,  medicine,  hy- 
giene, education,  but  it  is  very  imper- 
fectly apprehended  in  its  religious  bear- 
ing. In  all  those  subjects  we  see  that 
there  are  conditions  to  which  we  must 
conform  if  we  would  accomplish  our 
ends.  No  one  would  expect  to  get  a 
harvest  by  prayer  alone,  while  neglect- 
ing to  plow  and  sow.    No  one  would 


GOD   AND   RELIGION        125 

expect  to  become  educated  without  ap- 
propriate labor.  But  in  religion  we  have 
not  yet  learned  this  lesson.  We  expect 
God  to  work  in  the  spiritual  realm  im- 
mediately and  without  reference  to  law. 
We  are  simply  to  ask  and  receive.  To 
speak  of  law  is  to  thrust  a  barrier  be- 
tween the  soul  and  God.  To  suggest 
conditions  is  an  act  of  unfaith.  To  work 
for  spiritual  blessing  through  the  laws 
God  has  made  is  to  lean  to  our  own 
understanding  and  have  confidence  in 
the  flesh.  Education  is  the  work  of  man  ; 
as  for  the  work  of  the  Spirit,  we  cannot 
tell  whence  it  cometh  nor  whither  it 
goeth.  In  all  this  the  false  naturalism 
and  false  supernaturalism  of  untrained 
thought  are  manifest.  God's  action  is 
supposed  to  be  above  and  apart  from 
law,  rather  than  through  it,  or  in  accord- 
ance with  it ;  and  religion  is  supposed 
to  be  something  apart  from  living  inter- 
ests, a  thing  of  frames  and  retreats  and 
special  exercises,  rather  than  a  spiritual 


iX* 


126    THE    IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

principle  for  all  living,  the  abiding  inspi- 
ration of  all  work. 

Religious  thought  cannot  too  soon 
unlearn  this  false  supernaturalism  and 
learn  the  lesson  of  law.  We  must  lay  to 
heart  and  remember  that  the  fact  that 
God  worketh  in  us  in  no  way  vacates 
the  rule  that  we  must  work  out  our  own 
salvation.  The  wise  man  proceeds  in 
spiritual  things  as  in  physical  things. 
In  the  latter  case,  he  inquires  for  the  laws 
which  rule  and  adjusts  himself  to  them. 
In  the  former  case,  he  asks  for  the  laws 
of  successful  and  developing  life  and  ad- 
justs himself  to  them.  He  avails  himself 
of  all  his  knowledge  and  of  every  means 
of  influence  in  both  cases.  This  we  must 
all  do.  We  must  study  the  order  of  life, 
and  avail  ourselves  of  all  the  normal 
means  of  influence  for  developing  char- 
acter and  of  all  the  great  institutions 
evolved  by  humanity  on  its  upward  way. 
We  must  look  upon  the  family,  the  school, 
the  social  order,  the  great  industrial  and 


GOD  AND   RELIGION        127 

commercial  activities,  as  ordinances  of 
God,  or  as  instruments  through  which 
he  works  as  certainly  as  through  the 
church  and  formal  religious  exercises. 
Prayer  and  meditation  of  course  will 
always  have  their  place  and  function,  but 
they  are  by  no  means  the  only  way  of 
reaching  God  and  securing  his  aid.  We 
must  discern  the  divine  presence  and 
agency  in  life  as  a  whole,  and  work  with 
him  along  the  natural  lines  which  he  has 
established,  in  the  full  faith  that  thus  we 
are  co-workers  with  God,  and  that  re- 
sults thus  reached  are  as  divine  as  they 
would  be  if  reached  by  some  miraculous 
fiat.  The  undivineness  of  the  natural  is 
the  great  heresy  of  popular  religious 
thought,  and  a  great  source  of  the  weak- 
ness of  the  religious  life.  Good  inten- 
tions, zeal,  and  deep  religious  desire 
often  come  to  nought  from  being  left  to 
lose  themselves  in  formless  religiosity, 
instead  of  being  directed  into  normal 
lines  of  effort  in  accordance  with  human 


128    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

needs  and  human  nature.  And  there 
will  be  no  lasting  reform  in  religion  until 
we  return  to  a  true  naturalism  in  this 
matter,  recognizing  that  only  God  can 
give  the  increase,  and  also  that  God  will 
give  no  increase  unless  we  plant  and 
water,  and  further  recognizing  the  natu- 
ral order  of  things  as  a  part  of  the  divine 
appointment  for  our  spiritual  training, 
and  as  the  field  for  our  life's  work. 

Furthermore,  in  our  search  for  God  in 
life,  we  must  clearly  define  to  ourselves 
what  the  divine  aim  is  in  all  his  deal- 
ing with  us.  This  is  necessary  to  shut 
out  another  error  springing  from  the  doc- 
trine of  the  divine  immanence  itself.  In 
a  purely  metaphysical  sense  this  imma- 
nence means  only  that  all  finite  things 
immediately  depend  on  God ;  and  in  this 
sense  the  doctrine  carries  no  moral  qual- 
ity with  it.  From  this  point  of  view  it 
would  be  easy  to  use  the  doctrine  in  such 
a  way  as  to  cancel  moral   distinctions. 


x/ 


GOD   AND   RELIGION        129 

We  escape  this  result  by  distinguishing 
an  ideal  order  in  life  which  by  no  means 
always  coincides  with  the  actual.  Meta- 
physically, God  is  equally  in  both,  but 
only  the  former  represents  his  highest 
purpose  ;  and  in  this  sense  of  approval 
and  sympathy  God  is  in  the  former  and 
not  in  the  latter.  Thus  the  conception  of 
the  supernatural,  or  of  the  divine  pre- 
sence, undergoes  still  another  transforma- 
tion. It  has  now  a  moral  test  or  mea- 
sure, and  only  that  which  conforms  to 
such  a  test  is  to  be  called  divine.  God  is 
indeed  in  all  things,  but  in  some  things 
for  their  furtherance  and  in  others  for 
their  destruction,  in  some  things  in  love 
and  in  other  things  in  wrath  and  judg- 
ment. 

This  point  has  its  significance  only  in 
relation  to  the  moral  world.  When  we 
are  dealing  with  a  purely  physical  sys- 
tem, there  is  no  difficulty  in  making  all 
things  and  events  the  immediate  work  of 
God ;  but  some  embarrassment  emerges 


130    THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

when  we  come  to  the  moral  field.  Here 
some  very  undivine  things  are  done  with, 
apparently,  very  undivine  consequences. 
Some  weak  heads  have  been  so  heated 
by  the  new  wine  of  immanence  as  to  put 
all  things  on  the  same  level,  and  make 
men  and  mice  of  equal  value.  But  there 
is  nothing  in  the  dependence  of  all  things 
on  God  to  remove  their  distinctions  of 
value. 

One  confused  talker  of  this  type  was 
led  to  say  that  he  had  no  trouble  with 
the  notion  of  a  divine  man,  as  he  be- 
lieved in  a  divine  oyster.  Others  have 
used  the  doctrine  to  cancel  moral  differ- 
ences ;  for  if  God  be  in  all  things,  and  if 
all  things  represent  his  will,  then  what- 
ever is  is  right.  But  this  too  is  hasty. 
Of  course  even  the  evil  will  is  not  inde- 
pendent of  God,  but  lives  and  moves  and 
has  its  being  in  and  through  the  divine. 
But  through  its  mysterious  power  of  self- 
hood and  self-determination  the  evil  will 
is  able  to  assume  an  attitude  of  hostility 


GOD   AND   RELIGION        131 

to  the  divine  law,  which  forthwith  vin- 
dicates itself  by  appropriate  reactions. 
These  are  not  divine  in  the  highest  or 
ideal  sense.  They  represent  nothing 
which  God  desires  or  in  which  he  de- 
lights ;  but  they  are  divine  in  the  sense 
that  they  are  the  things  to  be  done  under 
the  circumstances.  The  divine  reaction 
in  the  case  of  the  good  is  distinct  from 
the  divine  reaction  against  evil.  Both  are 
divine  as  representing  God's  action,  but 
only  the  former  is  divine  in  the  sense  of 
representing  God's  approval  and  sympa- 
thy. All  things  serve,  said  Spinoza.  The 
good  serve,  and  are  furthered  by  their  ser- 
vice. The  bad  also  serve,  and  are  used  up 
in  the  serving.  According  to  Jonathan 
Edwards,  the  wicked  are  useful  **  in  being 
acted  upon  and  disposed  of."  As  "  ves- 
sels of  dishonor"  they  may  reveal  the 
majesty  of  God.  There  is  nothing,  there- 
fore, in  the  divine  immanence,  in  its  only 
tenable  form,  to  cancel  moral  distinctions 
or  to  minify  retribution.   The  divine  re- 


132    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

action  against  iniquity  is  even  more  sol- 
emn in  this  doctrine.  The  besetting  God 
is  the  eternal  and  inescapable  environ- 
ment ;  and  only  as  we  are  in  harmony 
with  him  can  there  be  any  peace. 

This  point  also  deserves  considera- 
tion, for  here  too  a  false  naturalism  has 
betrayed  popular  thought  into  error. 
Punishment  is  an  unpleasant  concep- 
tion, and  many  have  thought  to  escape 
it  by  reducing  it  to  natural  consequence. 
But  they  have  failed  to  ask  what  natural 
consequence  means  and  whence  it  comes. 
If  they  would  pursue  this  inquiry,  espe- 
cially in  view  of  the  divine  immanence, 
they  would  discover  that  God's  will  and 
purpose  are  immanent  in  all  natural  con- 
sequence. Thus  preeminently  in  "  nat- 
ural consequence"  is  God's  will  being 
done,  and  his  attitude  and  purpose 
revealed.  What  God  thinks  of  sin,  and 
what  his  will  is  concerning  it,  can  be 
plainly  seen  in  the  **  natural  conse- 
quences "  that  attend  it.   The  inner  dis- 


GOD   AND   RELIGION        133 

cord,  the  mutual  distrust,  the  aching 
void,  the  atrophy  of  facuhy,  the  depoten- 
tialization  of  the  spirit  and  its  gradual 
sinking  toward  lower  forms,  —  all  these 
are  highly  significant  "natural  conse- 
quences." We  see  natural  law  busily 
engaged  in  rooting  out  an  evil  stock,  — 
which  means  only  that  God  will  not  give 
them  living  room  any  longer.  Some  per- 
sons are  in  the  current  just  above  the  falls. 
Some  are  going  on  the  rocks.  Some 
are  sowing  to  the  flesh  and  are  reaping 
the  appropriate  corruption.  Whatsoever 
a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap,  is 
the  great  law  of  natural  consequences ; 
and  there  is  not  much  comfort  in  it  for 
one  who  thinks  to  escape  God  by  dodg- 
ing behind  nature  and  law.  In  law  itself 
we  are  face  to  face  with  God  ;  and  natural 
consequences  have  a  supernatural  mean- 
ing. 

With  this  distinction  between  the  ideal 
and  the  actual  in  mind,  it  is  plain  that  the 
supreme  mark  of  the  divine  presence  in 


134    THE   IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

the  higher  sense  must  be  found  in  the 
moral  and  spiritual  realm.  Nothing  what- 
ever that  could  happen  in  the  physical 
world  in  the  way  of  signs  and  wonders 
would  be  of  the  slightest  significance  ex- 
cept as  it  was  related  to  some  spiritual 
end ;  and  in  God's  world  such  unrelated 
wonders  must  be  forever  incredible.  A 
show  of  celestial  fireworks  which  ended 
in  itself  would  be  unworthy  of  both  God 
and  man.  Similarly,  no  extraordinary 
occurrences  in  the  psychological  world 
in  the  way  of  outpourings,  exaltations, 
emotional  fireworks,  would  be  of  the 
slightest  significance  except  as  they  led 
to  deeper  moral  and  spiritual  life.  Apart 
from  this  outcome  we  have  psychology, 
neurology,  pathology,  rather  than  reli- 
gion. From  failure  to  make  this  spiritual 
connection  we  fall  back  into  "  mere  nat- 
uralism." 

And  this,  too,  is  a  point  which  the  re- 
ligious teacher  cannot  too  much  lay  to 
heart.   Every  minister  of  much  experi- 


GOD  AND   RELIGION        135 

ence  knows  how  much  of  this  non-mor- 
alized religion  there  is  among  ignorant 
people.  They  seek  for  the  divine  in  the 
wrong  place,  and  mistake  pathology  for 
religion.  Of  course  we  may  not  prescribe 
what  the  emotional  forms  of  religious  ex- 
perience shall  be  in  all  cases,  nor  what 
manifestations  it  may  please  God  to  make 
to  the  seeking  soul,  but  we  may  affirm 
with  all  conviction  that  no  psychological 
fact  whatever  has  any  religious  value 
whatever  apart  from  its  moral  and  spirit- 
ual contents.  Unless  it  leads  to  holiness 
of  heart  and  life,  it  is  only  a  phase  of 
abnormal  psychology  without  any  truly 
religious  significance.  St.  Paul  thought 
little  of  "  tongues  '*  in  comparison  with 
love  and  righteousness. 

We  are  willing,  then,  to  allow  religious 
experience  to  be  anything  whatever, 
within  the  limits  of  decency  and  sanity ; 
but  when  it  comes  to  giving  it  a  divine 
significance,  we  insist  on  applying  the 
rule, "  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them ; " 


136    THE   IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

and  we  further  insist  on  rejecting  as  mere 
delusion  everything  whatever  that  will 
not  stand  this  test.  This  is  the  one  and 
only  sure  mark  of  the  presence  and  work 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  According  to  St. 
Paul,  "  the  fruit  of  the  Spirit  is  love,  joy, 
peace,  long-suffering,  kindness,  good- 
ness, faithfulness,  meekness,  self-control." 
Thus  he  makes  his  abode  with  us. 

If  this  position  needed  any  support,  it 
would  find  it  in  the  more  extensive  and 
careful  study  of  religious  phenomena  with 
which  the  educated  world  is  now  gener- 
ally familiar.  The  religious  history  of  hu- 
manity, quite  apart  from  Christianity,  is 
full  of  strange  and  abnormal  experiences 
which  are  supposed  to  be  peculiarly  reli- 
gious. Mohammedanism  and  Hinduism 
abound  in  phenomena  of  this  sort.  They 
are  even  possible  on  the  purely  physio- 
logical plane  through  the  influence  of 
alcohol  and  anaesthetics  and  narcotics. 

Such  things  are  interesting  as  showing 
certain  mysterious  possibilities  of  human 


I 


GOD  AND   RELIGION        137 

nature,  at  least  in  some  of  its  specimens ; 
but  they  are  far  more  interesting  as  show- 
ing the  necessity  we  are  under  of  esti- 
mating the  value  of  all  such  experiences 
by  their  moral  and  spiritual  contents. 
Apart  from  these  contents  we  are  not 
dealing  with  religious  facts  in  the  Chris- 
tian sense,  but  only  with  strange  psy- 
chological and  neurological  phenomena ; 
and  if  they  were  never  so  well  attested, 
they  would  not  bring  us  morally  one  step 
nearer  to  God.  Opium,  ether,  and  chlo- 
roform are  no  keys  to  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  Not  the  narcotized,  but  the  pure 
in  heart,  are  to  see  God.  Our  communion 
with  him  must  take  place  through  love, 
through  the  conscience,  through  active 
cooperation  with  him  in  bringing  in  the 
reign  of  love  or  righteousness.  What- 
ever does  not  attain  to  this  is  illusion  and 
delusion.  Whatever  mysticism  we  allow 
must  be  subject  to  law  for  the  sake  of  the 
intellect,  and  to  righteousness  for  the  sake 
of  the  conscience.   Only  that  is  divine 


138    THE   IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

in  this  matter  that  helps  men  spiritually 
Godward,  and  makes  them  more  effec- 
tive in  working  the  work  of  God  upon 
the  earth.  This  is  the  one  sure  distinc- 
tion between  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
and  the  revelations  of  chloroform,  the 
contagion  of  religious  crowds,  the  ima- 
ginations of  ignorance,  and  the  self-hyp- 
notizations  of  conceit. 

The  aberrations  on  this  point  of  the 
supernatural  in  religion  have  had  a  very 
complex  root.  The  deepest  source  of  the 
error  was  the  false  naturalism  and  false 
supernaturalism  which  led  to  looking  for 
God  only  in  unmediated  manifestations 
outside  of  the  order  of  natural  law.  This 
was  complicated  with  a  fear  of  Pelagian- 
ism,  leading  to  extravagant  assertions  of 
divine  sovereignty  and  human  inability. 
And  in  strenuous  times  this  surely  led  to 
a  high-pressure  religion  of  spiritual  strug- 
gles and  intense  emotions.  Because  of 
man's  inability,  everything  must  be  of 
God ;  and  because  of  the  false  super- 


GOD  AND   RELIGION        139 

naturalism,  God  was  surely  manifested 
only  in  unmediated  and,  so  far  as  the 
order  of  life  goes,  anomalous  ways.  This 
necessarily  led  to  excessive  introspection 
and  unwholesome  subjectivity;  and  men 
were  set  to  studying  their  own  subjective 
symptoms,  instead  of  being  taken  out  of 
themselves  and  put  upon  the  objective 
and  positive  task  of  doing  God's  will  in 
the  world  and  thus  bringing  in  his  king- 
dom. A  double  evil  resulted.  First,  a 
great  many  good  men  and  women  of 
stable  nerves  and  good  sense  were  kept 
out  of  all  joy  and  peace  in  their  religious 
life  because  of  their  mistaken  expecta- 
tions ;  and,  secondly,  other  persons,  often 
of  inferior  intellect  and  character  but 
psychologically  suggestible,  were  able  to 
imagine  they  had  the  prescribed  expe- 
riences and  were  not  a  little  damaged 
thereby.  And  these  evils  are  by  no  means 
ended  yet. 

In  his  work,  "  The  Varieties  of  Reli- 
gious Experience,"  p.  200,  Professor  Wil- 


I40   THE  IMMANENCE   OF  GOD 

Ham  James  gives  an  interesting  passage 
from  Jonathan  Edwards  which  shows 
that  Edwards  already  understood  the 
influence  that  suggestion,  expectation, 
and  imitation  often  have  in  moulding 
experience.    Edwards  says  :  — 

"A  rule  received  and  established  by 
common  consent  has  a  very  great,  though 
to  many  persons  an  insensible  influence 
in  forming  their  notions  of  the  process 
of  their  own  experience.  I  know  very 
well  how  they  proceed  as  to  this  matter, 
for  I  have  had  frequent  opportunities  of 
observing  their  conduct.  Very  often  their 
experience  at  first  appears  like  a  con- 
fused chaos,  but  then  those  parts  are 
selected  which  bear  the  nearest  resem- 
blance to  such  particular  steps  as  are 
insisted  on ;  and  these  are  dwelt  upon  in 
their  thoughts  and  spoken  of  from  time 
to  time,  till  they  grow  more  and  more 
conspicuous  in  their  view,  and  other 
parts  which  are  neglected  grow  more  and 
more  obscure.    Thus  what  they  have 


GOD  AND   RELIGION        141 

experienced  is  insensibly  strained  so  as 
to  bring  it  to  an  exact  conformity  to 
the  scheme  already  established  in  their 
minds.  And  it  becomes  natural  also  for 
ministers  who  have  to  deal  with  those 
who  insist  upon  distinctness  and  clearness 
of  method,  to  do  so  too."  —  **  Treatise  on 
Religious  Affections." 

Edwards  had  not  the  language  of 
modern  psychology,  but  he  had  recog- 
nized the  fact  of  suggestibility  and  the 
influence  of  expectation  in  the  religious 
field  with  all  clearness.  In  his  works 
written  after  the  "  Great  Awakening," 
one  clearly  sees  a  growing  conviction  on 
his  part  that  "  manifestations  "  are  very 
uncertain  tests  of  a  work  of  grace.  And 
the  only  way  out  of  all  these  confusions 
is  never  to  aim  at  "  experience,"  but  to 
aim  at  righteousness,  and  find  the  essen- 
tial and  only  sure  mark  of  the  divine 
presence,  in  a  religious  sense,  in  the 
fruits  of  the  Spirit.  And  along  with  the 
marked  and  sudden  transitions  of  char- 


142    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

acter  which  may  occur  in  mature  per- 
sons of  strenuous  type,  we  must  make 
place  for  a  gradual  training  of  the  will 
under  the  divine  education  of  life,  or  for  ^ 
quiet,  unreflective  growth  into  the  king- 
dom of  heaven.  Here  too  the  divine 
immanence  helps  us.  We  are  no  longer 
compelled  to  set  nature  and  grace,  the 
secular  and  the  religious,  the  human  and 
the  divine,  in  mutually  exclusive  anti- 
thesis ;  but  rather  find  them  in  mutual 
penetration. 

If  some  days  were  ushered  in  with  a 
mighty  bang,  and  other  days  came  with 
the  quiet  of  the  dawn,  we  might  con- 
ceivably have  an  astronomical  school  of 
bangers  and  one  of  anti-bangers ;  and 
they  might  so  confine  their  attention  to 
the  bang  as  to  forget  that  the  only  point 
of  any  real  importance  is  to  have  the  day 
come,  with  or  without  a  bang.  Com- 
pared with  this,  the  bang  question  is  in- 
significant. We  have  these  schools  in 
religious   experience,   emphasizing   the 


GOD  AND   RELIGION        143 

bang  or  the  non-bang  and  overlooking 
the  only  matter  of  importance,  —  the 
dawn  of  the  spiritual  day. 

This  false  supernaturalism  in  the  inner 
religious  life  of  the  subject  has  led  to 
corresponding  error  in  determining  reli- 
gious duty.  The  result  has  often  been 
an  abstract  religiosity  and  other-world- 
liness,  which  has  sometimes  made  sad 
work  of  the  life  that  now  is.  Submission 
to  the  will  of  God  is  indeed  the  central 
thing  in  religion,  and  its  importance  can- 
not be  overestimated.  Hence  religious 
thought  has  occupied  itself  largely  with 
securing  this  harmony  without  inquiring 
what  that  will  is  in  its  positive  contents. 
The  result  has  been  a  body  of  deter- 
minations, largely  negative,  and  for  the 
rest  mainly  concerned  with  the  securing 
of  tempers,  dispositions,  and  aspirations 
supposed  to  be  peculiarly  spiritual. 
When  this  result  is  combined  with  the 
disastrous  separation  of  the  secular  from 

X; 


144    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

the  religious,  it  leads  straight  toward 
asceticism  and  monasticism.  In  the  Pro- 
testant bodies  it  has  led  to  fixing  atten- 
tion too  exclusively  on  sin  and  salvation, 
abstractly  conceived,  as  the  matters  of 
supreme  importance  in  religion. 

Now  this  may  be  good  as  far  as  it 
goes,  but  it  certainly  does  not  go  very 
far.  To  be  sure,  submission  to  the  divine 
will  must  be  secured,  if  it  be  wanting; 
but  what  is  that  will  for  men  ?  After  man 
has  returned  from  his  willful  wanderings, 
he  is  only  at  the  beginning,  not  the  end. 
Now  he  must  begin  to  work  the  will  of 
God.  As  worldliness  consists  less  in  what 
is  done  than  in  the  spirit  of  the  doing,  so 
religion  consists  less  in  what  is  done  than 
in  the  spirit  of  the  doing.  Both  the  world- 
ling and  the  Christian  have  to  do  largely 
the  same  things.  But  the  worldling  loses 
himself  in  the  outward  and  sense  life,  and 
fails  to  relate  it  to  any  divine  meaning 
and  purpose.  The  Christian,  on  the  other  1/ 
hand,  is  in  the  same  sense  life,  but  he 


GOD  AND   RELIGION        145 

relates  it  to  a  divine  order,  and  seeks  to 
glorify  that  life  by  filling  it  with  courage 
and  devotion.  Religion  conceived  as  a 
specialty,  as  a  matter  of  prayers  and  rites 
and  ceremonies,  is  a  minor  matter,  and 
one  of  no  great  importance  ;  but  religion 
conceived  as  a  principle  which  knows  no 
distinction  of  secular  and  religious,  but 
pervades  all  life,  and  perpetually  offers 
unto  God  in  living  sacrifice  as  its  con- 
tinual spiritual  worship  the  daily  round 
with  all  its  interests  and  activities  sanc- 
tified by  the  filial  spirit,  —  this  is  the  ideal 
of  humanity.  So  long  as  we  form  any 
lower  conception  of  religion  than  this, 
so  long  will  religion  be  only  one  interest 
among  many,  and  life  will  lack  its  true 
unity. 

This  I  conceive  to  be  the  deepest  aim 
of  Christianity.  The  forgiveness  of  sins 
is  essential,  but  it  is  only  introductory. 
The  forms  of  worship  and  the  practices 
of  piety  are  important,  but  they  are 
only  instrumental.     They  are  not  the 


146    THE  IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

thing,  and  their  significance  consists 
entirely  in  what  they  help  us  to.  The 
thing,  the  central  thing,  is  the  recognition  ^ 
of  the  divine  will  in  all  life,  and  the  loyal, 
loving  effort  to  make  that  will  prevail  in 
all  life  :  first  of  all  in  the  hidden  life  of  the 
spirit,  and  then  in  family  life,  in  social 
life,  in  political  life,  in  trade,  in  art,  in  lit- 
erature, in  every  field  of  human  interest 
and  activity.  Only  thus  can  religion  be 
saved  from  unwholesome  and  baneful 
subjectivities.  Only  thus  can  it  gain  the 
healthy  objectivity  needed  to  keep  it  sane 
and  sweet.  The  religious  spirit  must 
have  all  fields  for  its  own  ;  and  at  the 
same  time  we  must  remember  that  all 
that  is  normal  to  man  and  demanded 
by  his  life  has  its  place  in  the  divine 
purpose  and  its  justifying  function  in 
the  divine  training  of  men.  To  think 
otherwise  is  atheism. 

One  of  the  good  signs  of  the  religious 
times  is  the  growing  recognition  of  this 
fact.   We  are  outgrowing  the  conception 


GOD   AND   RELIGION        147 

of  religion  as  a  thing  of  rites  and  cere- 
monies, of  cloisters  and  retreats,  of  holy- 
days  and  holy  places,  and  are  coming 
to  view  it  as  the  divine  principle  for  all 
living,  whatever  the  day  or  the  place  or 
the  work.  We  are  coming  to  deny  the 
distinction  between  secular  and  religious 
work,  and  to  adopt  into  holy  places  all  the 
normal  and  necessary  work  of  the  world. 
All  of  this  is  a  divine  ordinance,  and  ex- 
presses God's  will  concerning  us.  Men 
are  tiring  of  the  cloister  and  the  smell  of 
incense.  They  are  tiring  equally  of  the 
barren  inspection  of  their  spiritual  states, 
and  of  churning  up  artificial  emotions. 
They  need  to  be  taken  out  of  themselves 
and  given  some  worthy  task  to  perform 
under  some  worthy  inspiration  ;  and  this 
they  find  in  the  realization  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  upon  earth,  and  the  doing 
of  his  will  here  under  the  stars  as  it  is 
done  in  heaven.  It  is  under  the  uncon- 
scious influence  of  these  impulses,  which 
are  really  strivings  after  God,  the  present 


148    THE   IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

God,  the  immanent  God,  that  men  grow 
dissatisfied  with  the  formal  and  barren 
exercises  of  traditional  religion. 

The  need  of  the  divine  help  in  order  to 
live  the  life  of  the  spirit  is  as  manifest  as 
it  ever  was.  The  sense  of  a  divine  pre- 
sence in  our  lives  is  not  dying  out,  but  it 
is  taking  on  a  new  form  in  accordance 
with  a  more  careful  psychology  and  a 
greater  precision  of  thought.  Instead  of 
being  something  sensuously  presentable 
or  emotionally  definable,  it  is  rather  the 
assurance  of  faith  and  the  sense  of  reality 
which  comes  in  spiritual  living.  Along 
with  this  has  come  the  insight  that  it  is 
preeminently  in  the  conscience,  the  pure 
heart,  the  surrendered  will,  and  holy  ac- 
tivities that  God  makes  his  abode  with 
us.  From  this  we  may  expect  great  gain 
to  religion.  We  shall  lay  aside  our  irra- 
tional fear  of  naturalism  and  also  our 
crude  supernaturalism.  We  shall  find 
God  everywhere,  not  merely  in  unmedi- 


GOD   AND   RELIGION        149 

ated  and  miraculous  manifestations,  but 
also  in  the  world  he  has  made,  in  the 
laws  he  has  ordained,  in  the  great  forms 
of  life  and  society  which  he  has  ap- 
pointed, and  in  the  multitudinous  activi- 
ties which  life  necessitates.  We  shall 
come  into  communion  with  God  in  prayer 
and  meditation,  and  also  in  work  of  all 
kinds,  as  we  seek  to  build  up  his  king- 
dom in  the  earth.  We  shall  work  more 
definitely  along  lines  of  training,  culture, 
education,  the  improvement  of  all  the 
conditions  of  human  life  in  accordance 
with  the  laws  of  our  being,  yet  without 
closing  the  spirit  to  direct  contact  with 
the  Divine.  In  so  doing  we  shall  mani- 
fest ourselves  as  wise  sons  of  God,  and 
the  divine  manifestation  will  correspond. 
Indeed,  there  is  no  telling  what  God 
would  do  for  a  community  thoroughly 
bent  on  doing  his  will  and  using  all 
the  means  of  influence  in  their  power. 
Nature  is  no  closed  system,  but  forever 
becomes  that  which  God  wills  it  to  be. 


150    THE   IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

Along  with  a  moralized  humanity  might 
well  go  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth. 
To  them  that  have  shall  be  given.  At 
this  point  I  more  than  suspect  that  I  am 
what  Professor  James  calls  himself,  "a 
crass  supernaturalist."  My  "  crassitude  '* 
is  limited,  not  by  any  respect  for  nature 
as  something  having  metaphysical  exist- 
ence and  rights  of  its  own,  but  solely  by 
the  insight  into  the  necessity  of  an  order 
of  experience  on  which  we  can  depend. 
Without  that,  we  should  be  equally  at 
sea  in  both  mind  and  morals.  We  must, 
then,  learn  the  lesson  of  law  and  self-help. 
For  some  time,  at  least,  the  keynote  of 
religious  progress  must  be  found,  not  in 
vague  and  illiterate  utterances  about  the 
supernatural,  but  rather  in  the  divineness 
of  the  natural  and  the  naturalness  of  the 
divine.  This  term  supernatural  has  so 
many  misleading  associations,  and  is  still 
the  subject  of  so  many  misunderstand- 
ings, that  we  would  do  well  to  abandon 
it  altogether  and  in  its  place  write  God ; 


GOD   AND   RELIGION        151 

and  then,  in  the  assured  faith  that  we  are 
in  his  world  and  his  hands,  resolutely 
set  about  our  Father's  business,  looking 
not  for  signs  and  wonders,  but  for  the 
coming  of  the  kingdom  of  God  in  the 
form  of  higher  and  holier  living. 

Thus  we  see  the  deep  significance 
of  the  divine  immanence  for  religious 
thought.  It  dispels  that  great  cloud  of 
difficulties,  born  of  crude  naturalistic 
thinking,  that  haunt  popular  religion. 
This  is  largely  a  negative  service,  but  it 
is  important  nevertheless.  It  recalls  God 
from  the  infinite  distance  in  space  and 
time  to  which  sense  thought  must  banish 
him,  and  where  we  so  often  lose  him,  and 
makes  him  the  omnipresent  power  by 
which  all  things  exist  and  on  which  all 
things  continually  depend.  This  meta- 
physical presence  does  not  indeed  secure 
spiritual  sympathy  and  fellowship  on  our 
part,  but  it  removes  the  speculative  ob- 
stacles thereto  that  exist  in  many  minds. 


152    THE   IMMANENCE   OF   GOD 

and  thus  makes  room  for  the  spiritual  life 
of  communion  and  sonship.  This  life 
itself  can  be  secured  only  in  devout  and 
faithful  living  by  each  for  himself,  but  it 
is  something  to  have  the  speculative  in- 
timidations removed  that  sometimes,  like 
Bunyan's  lions,  frighten  pilgrims  from 
the  way.  It  is  something  to  know  that 
this  world,  however  mysterious  and  even 
sinister  in  many  of  its  aspects,  is  after  all 
God's  world;  that  we  are  not  standing 
helpless  and  hopeless  in  the  midst  of 
Strauss's  "enormous  machine"  world 
with  its  pitiless  wheels  and  thundering 
hammers,  but  we  are  in  a  personal  world, 
a  moral  world,  where  character  is  being 
wrought  out  and  a  kingdom  of  right- 
eousness is  being  set  up.  In  such  a  world 
it  is  permitted  to  see  visions  and  dream 
dreams,  and  devote  ourselves  to  the  ser- 
vice of  the  highest  and  best,  in  the  sure 
faith  that  they  are  also  the  truest  and 
most  real,  the  abiding  and  essential  stuff 
of  the  universe. 


GOD   AND   RELIGION        153 

But  we  also  see  the  necessity  of  uniting 
this  thought  of  the  divine  immanence 
with  the  thought  of  law.  All  is  law ;  all 
is  God.  All  is  God;  all  is  law.  We  read  it 
either  way,  according  to  the  emphasis  de- 
manded by  the  times  and  circumstances. 
For  those  who  have  not  learned  the  les- 
son of  law,  who  are  seeking  short  cuts, 
and  who  are  not  availing  themselves  of 
the  natural  means  of  growth  and  influ- 
ence, we  say,  All  is  law.  For  those,  on 
the  other  hand,  who  have  lost  God  in  the 
law,  and  who  have  fallen  into  the  para- 
lyzing notion  of  a  self  sufficient  mechan- 
ism, we  say,  All  is  God.  In  both  cases 
alike  we  say  with  the  apostle :  Work  out 
your  own  salvation  with  fear  and  trem- 
bling ;  for  it  is  God  who  worketh  in  you, 
both  to  will  and  to  work  for  his  good 
pleasure.  For  in  him  we  live  and  move 
and  have  our  being. 


Electrotyped  and prmted  by  H.  O.  Houghton  6y  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


VlV 


UFE  EVERLASTING 


By  JOHN  FISKE 


"  An  essay  so  skillfully  written  that  no  reader  can 
misunderstand  it,  except  by  wilful  preference.  It  un- 
folds a  process  of  reasoning  by  which  science  is  made 
to  show  the  probability  of  immortality,  and  to  exhibit 
it  as  far  less  incredible  than  many  natural  processes 
accepted  without  question." 

Boston  Transcript. 

"The  highly  condensed  matter  of  Dr.  Fiske's  work, 
its  luminous  argument,  and  faultless  logic  imme- 
diately commend  it  to  the  better  class  of  those  seek- 
ing for  some  modern  confirmation  of  Christianity." 

New  York  Times, 


i6mo,  ^i.oo  net     Postpaid  $1.07 


HOUGHTON, 

MIFFLIN 
&  COMPANY 


BOSTON 

AND 

NEW  YORK 


IMMORTALITY  and 
the  NEW  THEODICY 


By  GEORGE  A.  GORDON 


"The  question  of  the  immortality  of  man  is  con- 
sidered here  from  a  purely  rational  basis.  The  course 
of  thought  is  ably  planned  and  is  worked  out  with 
great  care,  and  with  the  frankest  and  fullest  purpose 
to  apprehend  truth  and  interpret  it." 

The  Congregationalisty  Boston, 


"  We  cordially  commend  this  book  both  for  its  stimu- 
lating and  nutritious  character,  as  well  as  for  the 
choice  and  vigorous  language  in  which  the  subject  is 
presented."  The  ChurchmaUy  New  York. 


i6mo,  gilt  top,  ^i.oo 


HOUGHTON, 

MIFFLIN 
&  COMPANY 


BOSTON 

AND 

NEW  YORK 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  I.A,. 

STAMPED  BE^w^"'^  "*^= 


Td  dny\ 


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